Wish Upon a Simple Soul
by Redler Red7
Summary: When a miracle is within her grasp, what would Ruby Rose wish for? A chance to be a hero? To save people? Was that enough? What wish would make her soul gem shine? A crossover story wherein the members of team RWBY contract and become magical girls. Every chapter focuses on one character's rise to power and fall to despair
1. Red Like Roses

**Chapter 1: Red Like Roses**

* * *

Ruby Rose awoke late that night in her room to the sound of someone's voice. The voice wasn't very scary in and of itself. In fact, she'd go as far as to say that the voice was kind of cute in a way. The scary part was that she could hear the voice coming from everywhere at once - not too loud nor too quiet. It was as if the voice was coming directly from inside her head.

"Who are you?" Ruby whispered, immediately hiding under her blanket.

" _My name is Kyubey_ ," the voice said. " _Do not be alarmed, Ruby Rose. I am not a threat. Come out from under that bedsheet and see for yourself._ "

Ruby bit her lip, unsure of how to proceed. " _That's what a monster would_ want _you to think,_ " part of her said. And almost immediately another part of her retorted, " _If that voice is already in your head, then you were doomed from the very start_." Faced with such a terrifying realization, Ruby could only bite her lip harder.

"I'm coming out... Don't hurt me..."

Peeking from under her blanket, she found a white creature at the foot of her bed. It was small - about the size and shape of a house cat - with a large fluffy tail, long flaps that came out of its ears, and glowing red eyes. It smiled quietly at her as its tail swooshed behind it.

" _I urge you to calm yourself, Ruby Rose,_ " the creature known as Kyubey said. _"I am not here to hurt you."_

Ruby watched Kyubey with equal parts worry and curiosity as it began licking its paws the way a cat would. "Why _are_ you here?" she asked as she tentatively moved a little closer.

Kyubey looked her in the eyes and tilted its head. " _Tell me, Ruby Rose. Do you believe in the existence of magic and miracles?_ "

Ruby immediately felt a chill run up her spine. "No," she said automatically as she scooted away from the creature.

" _What a curious reaction._ " Kyubey regarded her for a moment before turning away. " _It is unfortunate that you do not believe. You had potential. Perhaps at a later date._ " It then jumped off of Ruby's bed, taking one last second to look back at Ruby before disappearing into the shadows.

" _Until we meet again, Ruby Rose..._ "

* * *

It had been two weeks since the last time Ruby spoke with the creature known as Kyubey. She would have written off the entire encounter as a nightmare had she not seen Kyubey several more times since that first encounter.

Whenever she was walking home from school, she would sometimes look behind her and see Kyubey standing with the crowd at the intersection she had just crossed. Whenever she was studying in the school library, she would sometimes see Kyubey lying on top of the librarian's desk, as if asleep. Even within the safety of her own house, she'd sometimes find Kyubey's tail flit out of view as he rounded a corner.

And what was most confusing about it was that no one seemed to notice he was there. They'd always just look past him, as if the weird white cat didn't even exist. It was so strange. Ruby wondered if she was just hallucinating. If she was the only one who could see Kyubey then it was the obvious conclusion to draw. Except she _wasn't_ the only one who was be able to see it. Ruby knew her sister, Yang, could see Kyubey too.

For a few days now, she had seen Yang with the creature perched atop her shoulder, sitting on her lap, or walking alongside her. Whenever she saw them together, Yang always seemed to be muttering to herself and trying very hard look in any direction other than wherever Kyubey happened to be. It was subtle. Yang was hiding the fact very well. But Ruby could see straight through it.

Why was Yang involved with Kyubey? How did that happen? What were they talking about? What on earth was even going on?

Those were the questions that swam through Ruby's mind. They made sleep hard to come by...

* * *

Yang had started coming home late. It wasn't all that unusual. She was in high school, after all. High schoolers had a lot more freedom to just be out and about than middle schoolers. Still though, arriving at ten at night? It was driving their dad sick with worry. He'd always chew her out about how a girl like her shouldn't be out and about after dark. Who knew what creeps were out there and what they'd do to her if they ever got their hands on her. Yang always nodded in silence until their dad finished his lecture. She'd then apologize and head straight to her room.

Ruby could feel for Yang. Their dad could be overbearing at times. Still, she was pretty worried about Yang as well... but for different reasons.

She had enough of simply watching from a distance. Kyubey was up to something and Yang was involved. She wasn't gonna keep letting it happen without at least finding out what it was.

* * *

Ruby sat on her bed, knees up to her chest, her eyelids sagging from sleepiness. It was past midnight. Normally she'd be asleep at this time and frankly she kinda wished she was. But she had other plans that night - plans that were worth the hit to her sleep schedule.

"Kyubey, are you there?" she asked quietly.

Ruby waited a moment for a response. She almost believed she wouldn't get one. But then she blinked and suddenly there was a cat-like creature sitting outside her window. It looked at Ruby with its glowing red eyes, the streetlamps outside casting dark shadows against its white fur.

" _What is it, Ruby Rose?_ " Kyubey asked as it hopped onto her bed and sat comfortably in front of her.

Ruby pursed her lips. She felt a churning in her stomach. She was grateful she hadn't eaten much during dinner.

"What did you do to Yang. What did you involve her in?" Ruby asked. Kyubey stared unblinking for a moment. It was unnerving.

" _To answer your question, I must ask what I asked you twenty-five days ago. Do you believe in the existence of magic and miracles?_ "

Ruby frowned. Why did that even matter?

" _It matters because you have potential_ ," Kyubey said, as if Ruby had said her thoughts aloud. " _Your sister had potential as well._ "

"Potential for _what_?" Ruby growled, her frustration steadily building at the creature's cryptic way of speaking.

" _Magic_ ," Kyubey said simply. " _I contracted Yang Xiao Long to defeat physical manifestations of darkness and despair using the magic she had potential for._ "

Ruby stared at Kyubey, wide-eyed as she parsed exactly what Kyubey had just told her. "You... you..." she said shakily, the sides of her mouth slowly curling up ever so slightly. "You turned her into a superhero...? Am I hearing this right...?"

Kyubey's tail swished behind him.. " _You can call it that._ "

Ruby slowly shook her head, a wry smile on her face. Yang Xiao Long, Ruby's big sister, fighting evil creatures with magic? That sounded like something from the the cartoons she watched when she was a kid. It couldn't be real, could it? It couldn't be. Because if it was, then... then... it would be so dumb... so weird... so... so cool...

A person with magic powers. A superhero fighting monsters. Someone who saved people. How many years had Ruby fantasized about being one? And here Yang was, doing exactly that - and keeping it a secret! Why didn't Yang tell her? Didn't she realize that Ruby would have been ecstatic to hear about what she'd become? About what she could do? If Ruby had magic, Yang would be the first person to know! She-

Ruby suddenly recalled what Kyubey said earlier. She had potential for magic... She could be like Yang... She could also be a hero...

Ruby swallowed down the excitement welling up inside her and looked to Kyubey. Slowly she leaned forward. "I... I don't know how much to believe you but... I wanna hear more... How do get magic?"

* * *

Ruby had always wanted to be a hero. She never expected it to be a walk in the part. She knew she had to make sacrifices to walk that path. The constant threat of death and injury; the need to balance a secret life with her normal life - all of it seemed like things she'd eventually get used to if she just lived that way long enough. But the sacrifices required for Kyubey's deal made her a lot less sure of herself.

Even after two days thinking on the matter, she wasn't sure.

* * *

Ruby sat slumped over her desk, several sheets worth of unfinished homework stacked next to her. In light of recent developments, she had started falling behind on her studies. She tried to catch up but she could never focus long enough to make any real progress. Her mind was too occupied by other things.

"Kyubey, I wanna ask you some more questions," she said quietly.

White paws landed atop her stack of papers. " _Ask away, Ruby Rose_ ," Kyubey said.

Ruby slowly sat up, eyes still unfocused. "Do all the girls you contract honestly agree to your deal after you told them you would tear out their souls and turn it into a glowing rock?"

" _Very few girls are aware of the nature of soul gems. In truth, most of them made contracts immediately after being given the offer and most of them fall in battle before ever finding out._ "

Ruby frowned. "You never thought it would be, I don't know, _important_ that they'd know?"

" _Based on our statistics, the likelihood of girls contracting is severely diminished when they have that knowledge. Their potential also tends to drop. We have chosen to withhold the information in order to better guarantee that girls would contract."_

Ruby's frown deepened. That was a sleazy business practice. Really sleazy...

 _"As for the girls who are already contracted, we would tell them if they asked. It is just that the topic rarely comes up."_

"So the reason you told me about soul gems at all was...?"

 _"Because you asked, yes."_

Ruby grit her teeth. "So if I never asked, you would never have told me," she growled. "Because telling me would lower my potential."

" _On the contrary, your potential is surprisingly stable. In fact, your potential has actually_ increased _since you found out. It's quite unusual but not unprecedented._ "

Ruby nodded slowly.

She felt numb. She had felt numb since she first found out. And yet, under those dull sensations, she still felt the excitement at the thought of getting magic powers to fight evil. It didn't really make sense. Everything about the situation told at her to remove herself from it. It screamed that she wanted nothing to do with it. Even still, she felt drawn to the thought.

Maybe that's what Kyubey meant when it said her potential was stable. Even after hearing everything she heard - all the horrible things Kyubey seemed to be doing to girls without their knowledge - for whatever reason, she was still willing to contract. The want was still there...

Ruby rubbed her eyes, feeling a headache growing from her lack of sleep over the last few days.

"Did you tell Yang...? About soul gems, I mean...?"

" _She is aware of it, yes._ " Ruby hummed questioningly at the wording. Sensing curiosity, Kyubey continued.

" _Yang Xiao Long met another contractee last night. Together, they took down a witch residing in downtown Vale. After which, they fought over the grief seed it dropped. Due to her powers, Yang Xiao Long dispatched her opponent easily. Her finishing blow was to the soul gem, shattering it and immediately killing the other girl. Upon realizing this, she panicked and called out to us. After we explained to her the true nature of soul gems, she told us to_ shut up and leave her alone _._ "

Ruby released a shallow breath. Yang had been gone for the entire night. Yang's friends said she still went to school the next day but seemed distant. Hollow. Which was exactly what she was like when she got home later that night. Their dad was too worried to be angry at her. He just wanted to know what happened so he could help. Of course Yang never told him. She didn't tell Ruby either. She wasn't even aware that Ruby knew she was a magical girl.

"Is Yang... is she okay...?"

" _Yang Xiao Long is not in a good state, currently,_ " Kyubey said. " _However, we believe that she will recover._ "

Ruby smiled in bittersweet relief. Yang getting better was certainly a welcome thought. And yet, she couldn't help but feel disturbed.

 _This_ was what she wanted? _This_ was the path she was headed towards? A self-imposed isolation from her friends and family? Fighting over grief seeds like starving wolves over scraps of meat? Being forced to kill _anything_ that wasn't even a witch because it was a threat to your survival as a magical girl? What could possibly be worth this much suffering?

" _That is the correct question to ask, Ruby Rose. What is worth a life so filled with hardships and sorrow? What do you desire so much that you'd give up everything to have it? What is the wish that will make your soul gem shine?_ "

Ruby blinked. A certain energy seemed to well up inside of her - like liquid fire coursing through her veins. She didn't know what her wish would be. A simple question from Kyubey wouldn't be enough for her to figure it out. But it was enough to tell her something very important.

Even after everything, she still had potential. She still had a wish that could be granted. She still had something she believed was worth her soul and a lifetime of battling witches. And even though she had no idea what it was, it was comforting to know that she had one. And that eventually she'd figure out what it was.

Once she did that, she'd have it. Forever.

Kyubey jumped off the table and onto the windowsill. " _There is no rush, Ruby Rose. As we stated earlier, your potential is remarkably stable. Take as long as you need._ "

With that, Kyubey disappeared into the night, leaving Ruby with the echoes of those words in her mind.

What was the wish that would make her soul gem shine? "What?" indeed...

* * *

The question Kyubey asked her had plagued her for many nights. And the more nights she spent awake just thinking about it, the more and more she wanted her wish to mean something. She wanted to be a hero. And for a while, she wanted to be one just for the sake of it. But she knew she couldn't wish for it. Not when any other wish would grant her the same opportunity. It had to be something important. Something she could take with her for the rest of her life as a magical girl. What would it be...? If only she could just instantly know so she could finally make her wish!

* * *

Yang had been gone for a few days now. Their dad had fallen into a panic. The police have started investigating. Everything was a mess.

And yet, Ruby wasn't as worried as she would have been normally.

Kyubey tells her that Yang's wish was to find her mother. It said that for the past month, Yang had been hunting late and gathering as many grief seeds as she could in preparation for the journey it would take to get to her.

"She's fine, right?" Ruby asked as she stood outside her house, a police car parked outside, the owner of which no doubt speaking with her dad again.

" _She is currently three hundred miles from Vale,_ " Kyubey replied, sitting on the sidewalk next to her. " _Her soul gem is healthy, as is her supply grief seeds. And due to her powers, survival shouldn't be too difficult for her._ "

Ruby nodded. "No... It shouldn't be..."

" _If you wish to find her, you'd be more than capable of it._ "

"I'm not too worried. She can take care of herself," Ruby replied. "Walk with me, Kyubey. We need to talk."

She stalked away from the house. She needed to be somewhere private and her house was not that. Besides, the last thing she wanted to do was talk to more police officers. Kyubey padded alongside her.

After two or so hours of walking, they stood before a small stone slab in the grass, surrounded by other similar slabs. The slab directly in front of them had one name. Summer Rose.

"Thus kindly, I scatter," Ruby whispered, reading the epitaph aloud. "Tell me Kyubey, is it possible to wish someone back to life?"

"It depends on the potential of the girl making the wish. Unfortunately, you do not have enough to make such a wish."

Ruby smiled sadly as she knelt down, touching the tombstone.

Yang's mother was not Ruby's mother, at least not biologically. Yang's mother left them years ago and never came back. Ruby's mother stayed with their dad to take care of them both but... she eventually passed away, dying an early death. Both of Yang's mothers ended up leaving her, one way or another. Ruby could understand why she'd make the wish that she did.

As for Ruby... well, Summer Rose left her when she was too young to really understand. Other than vague memories that gave her warm feelings, she didn't really know what it was like to have a mother or what her mother was even like. Everything she knew about Summer was from what her dad and Yang told her. If she were alive then maybe Ruby would at least be able to talk to her. Get to know her. And maybe finally get some closure. She never even got to say goodbye...

 _"Hmm... This is an interesting conundrum. Permanent resurrection is not within your power. However, you may be able to temporarily bring back an incorporeal form of her. I believe you humans call them spirits?"_

Ruby smiled sadly. "Talking to ghosts? Really Kyubey?"

" _It is entirely possible_ ," Kyubey insisted. " _Do keep in mind that these incorporeal beings will be somewhat different to what they were in life. However, they will still be the person you bring back_."

"So... what, it's bringing back the idea of them rather than who they really are? That's a little... I don't know if I want that..."

" _Death is a barrier that only an incredible amount of power can overcome, Ruby Rose. At your level of potential, this is the closest miracle you can achieve._ "

Ruby turned away from Kyubey, touching the rose carving on the stone in front of her. She sighed in disappointment. The closest miracle wasn't close enough. Not nearly close enough...

Right...?

An idea formed in Ruby's mind. Not so much an idea as so much a hope. A tiny desperate hope. A hope that may very well tip the scales if it proved true.

"If I'm bringing back the idea of Summer Rose... I'm bringing back a memory of her, right?"

' _That is correct_ "

"So... will it just be _my_ memories... or the memories of everything who knew her...?"

Kyubey stared at her for a moment as he usually did with these sorts of important questions. Ruby had learned to be patient and wait it out. The anticipation while waiting for the answer never went away though.

" _If this is your wish, then it can be the memories of whoever you want. The ghosts of anyone everyone's pasts is yours to see._ "

Was that close enough? Was the closest miracle to complete resurrection close enough for Ruby to wish it? Was it worth her soul, seeing her mother again from the memories of the people who knew her? Was it worth a lifetime of suffering? Was it enough...?

"If I wish this, I'll have it with me for the rest of my life," Ruby whispered to herself. "Kyubey... I want to... I really want to... But..."

" _If you're asking for time to think, I'm afraid that you don't have much of it. It is rather unfortunate that you brought us to a cemetery of all places. We would have dissuaded you had we not predicted your coming here would guarantee your contract._ "

Ruby slowly began to stand. "What are you talking about...?"

" _In your sister's absence, a witch has taken up residence in this cemetery. Should you contract, it will attack. Should you attempt to leave without contracting, it will attack. If you stay here too long, it will attack. Your only hope for survival is contracting._ "

Ruby's face contorted into a snarl. "You little rat!"

" _Do not lie to yourself, Ruby Rose. With every question answered, you became closer and closer to contracting. Even if we allowed you more time to think, it would still result in the same. We thought it more efficient to give you the push you needed._ "

Ruby glared at Kyubey, the white creature maintaining eye contact, obviously unperturbed.

" _Time is of the essence, Ruby Rose_."

Ruby shook her head and stomped her foot. "Darn it, you're a scumbag, Kyubey! Fine! I'll do it! Make me a magical girl! Give me my powers so I can kill this witch and see my mom again!"

There was silence. A silence so complete that her ears rang. It rang louder and louder and until a searing pain erupted from her chest. Her mind screamed in agony even as her body grew numb and weightless. This was it. The feeling of her soul being ripped out of her. The feeling of her soul gem being created.

Then there was darkness. An empty void that swallowed the world with only a bright red speck illuminating it. It drew closer, growing brighter. It was within arms reach and almost blindingly bright. She reached out. She could almost touch it.

" _Your wish has overcome entropy_ ," Kyubey told her, the creature's voice sounding small distant over the ringing in her ears and the screaming of her mind. " _This is your soul, Ruby Rose. Take it and unleash your new power._ "

Her hands grasped the light. A warmed radiated from her, quelling the numbness of her limbs.

Ruby blinked. Suddenly the pain and darkness was gone. She still stood before her mother's grave but instead of the grassy cemetery a two hour walk from her house, she instead found herself before a snowy cliffside, facing an ephemeral figure in a while cloak. It smiled at her for a moment before she turned into white rose petals that scattered in the wind.

" _Congratulations, Ruby Rose. You are now a magical girl._ "

Ruby nodded quietly. "Was... that my mother...?"

" _We would assume so._ "

Ruby looked at the object in her hand, a gem that glowed the same bright red she saw when she contracted. Her soul gem. She was a magical girl now. She almost couldn't believe it.

" _Are you aware of your powers?_ "

"Invisibility, incorporeality, illusions, short range teleportation," Ruby said automatically.

" _What manner of illusion?_ "

"Recreation of people, places, and events based on people's memories."

" _Specifications of your teleport? Any limitations?_ "

"Instant teleportation, maximum range of ten feet, half a second rest between teleports. I can only teleport other objects, but only if I'm touching them and I have to teleport with them."

" _Most interesting._ "

Ruby blinked in confusion. "H-how do I know all that?"

" _All magical girls are aware of the mechanics of how their powers work. Think of it as a magical girl's instincts. If they do not have this knowledge, they would not be effective at hunting witches. By this same logic, magical girls are also adept at the use of their weapons._ "

Ruby nodded, already accepting those words. Something inside her told her Kyubey was speaking the truth.

" _We recommend you transform now. The witch that created this labyrinth is currently waiting for you to come but it will not wait forever._ "

Ruby nodded, her hands clasping her soul gem. She flashed red and instantly transformed. Her magical girl attire was a black gothic dress with a red cloak and combat boots. Her soul gem set into the metal disk engraved with a rose which served as the pin that held her cloak over her shoulders. Not quite her usual style but at least it was comfortable.

In her left hand, she held a scythe which she gave a tentative twirl. The shaft was a black pole with glowing red engravings. The blade at the end was a ghostly white sickle with a serrated edge and similar red engravings. It looked absolutely terrifying. This was her weapon?

" _The witch should be deeper in the labyrinth. You should be able to sense when you get close. Good luck._ "

Ruby swallowed a breath. "Easy for you to say. You're not the one walking into danger."

" _You are in a witch's labyrinth. You are already in danger._ "

"Yeah, yeah."

Ruby took a deep breath to steel herself and began walking to where her soul gem led her.

The witch's labyrinth was bleak and empty. A snowy white expanse filled with lots and lots of gnarled dead trees. The sky above was a black void with only a blood-red shattered moon illuminating her path. It wasn't quite as trippy as what Kyubey had described witch labyrinths to be but that did nothing to ease Ruby's nerves. Behind every tree could be a familiar or even the witch itself. She was understandably jumpy.

"I don't like how there's nothing here," Ruby muttered, holding tightly to her scythe. "I feel like I'm walking into a trap..."

" _It certainly seems that way,_ " Kyubey stated. " _This goes without saying but we recommend you be cautious._ "

Ruby continued walking, being mindful of the tangle of roots hidden under the snow. Every step presented the danger of losing her footing.

"Do you know anything about this witch?"

" _We know when it first appeared, when it arrived in this cemetery, and how long it has been here._ "

"Some help _you_ were."

The trees were getting denser, their bare branches growing sharper and more angular the closer she got to her destination. After a certain point, every branch looked like a mass of swords just waiting to fall and impale her every which way. Ruby shuddered at the thought.

" _Such injury shouldn't be too much of a bother as long as your soul gem remains intact_ ," Kyubey reminded.

"It _is_ a waste of magic though," Ruby replied. "Though, I guess you're right that I shouldn't worry so much. I'm kinda psyching myself out of this whole witch killing thing."

The trees had gotten so dense that she was basically walking through a tunnel that was steadily growing narrower. Her instincts told her to stop going forward and go the other way but her soul gem said otherwise. The witch was close. She could feel it.

"Walking this labyrinth without actually fighting anything is messing me up," Ruby grumbled. "I'd actually feel _a lot better_ if I was just attacked... Like... right now..."

Upon saying that, a rush of wind blew all the trees away and she found herself in an open clearing filled with familiars. Her cloak fluttered in the wind as she smiled wryly. The witch had a sense of humor?

The familiars were a grotesque amalgamation of black fur, rotted flesh, and bone shaped vaguely like a dog, with glowing red outlines around its eyes, fangs, and claws. The snarls and howls they sent her way suggested that they were supposed to be wolves.

"G-good doggies," Ruby said shakily as she slowly took a step back.

The moment her foot touched the ground, the wolves pounced, forcing Ruby to blink away. She landed a short distance from the wolves, feeling snow and tree roots give way under her boots.

Her mind went immediately into autopilot as the wolves pounced again. She stepped to the side, allowing one of the wolves to jump straight into the waiting blade of her scythe before delivering a sharp kick to its back, cleaving it in two. The wolf began dissolving into black smoke, leaving only a pile of bones in its wake.

"Whoa," Ruby breathed in shock. Kyubey was right about having magical girl instincts. Somehow, she, a girl who had never held a death scythe in her life, knew how to fight with one. She wasn't sure whether to be amazed or to be terrified.

The battle continued in much the same way it began, Ruby running completely on autopilot, blinking everywhere and slaying every familiar that came within range of her scythe blade. Wolves started coming out of the woodwork, droves upon droves of them jumping headlong into circle of death that surrounded her. For minutes on end, she fought. It was starting to seem like there was no end to them.

But then, for whatever reason, it all stopped. After Ruby decapitated the last wolf, she found that there were no more left.

"Boss fight time?" Ruby asked.

" _If you mean to say that you are about to fight the witch then we agree with your assumption. It is likely that the witch will attack soon_."

The terrain of the labyrinth shifted, the trees growing larger and denser until they were veritable mountains in the distance. And atop one of those trees as a black wolf, much like the familiars Ruby just fought. Except it was bigger. _Much_ bigger. She'd compare its size to an eighteen wheeler truck. Closer inspection showed a vaguely human face from within the its mouth, with several human limbs inside its body, visible through the holes in its rotted flesh. The face from within the mouth looked at her and smiled widely, stretching literally from ear to ear.

This was it. This was the witch.

The thirty foot tall wolf dropped from the tree into the clearing with Ruby, sending tremors through the ground upon impact. It slowly advanced towards her, every step punctuated by the terrible crunch of snow and roots getting crushed under its paws. When it was only a hundred feet away from Ruby, it threw its head back and made an ear-piercing howl. After which, half a dozen more familiars leapt from out of the trees and into the clearing. Like the witch, they were also much larger than the other familiars, though not as large as the witch itself. They too had the human faces and limbs within them.

" _Unfortunately, much of your magic has been expended simply fighting familiars. Had you been more experienced, you could have handled them more efficiently and would have entered this fight with more magic to spare. However, we are still confident that you will be able to defeat this witch. Good luck._ "

"I don't know how to take that comment," Ruby muttered and she brandished her weapon and got ready to defend against the incoming attack.

Much to Ruby's surprise, fighting the giant wolves was actually much easier than fighting the smaller ones. Her size and mobility made it child's play to slink between their legs and attack their weak underbelly. The only problem was how disgusting it was to do so. Every time her scythe cleaved at a wolf from below, its innards and dismembered human limbs would rain down on her. She was very glad that those too dissolved into black smoke.

While fighting the witch, the concept of time seemed to blur for Ruby. She knew she had been fighting it for only a few minutes and they every swing and every dodge seemed to take an eternity. By the time she had slain all of the familiars, leaving the witch wounded and limping, she felt like multiple life times had passed her by. She just barely had enough strength to swing her scythe and perform the final blow before fatigue brought her crumpling to the floor.

"I... I won," she breathed as she rolled over and watched the black sky ripple and fade away, the cloudy grey clouds of reality returning once more. "That was a lot easier than I expected it to be..."

" _We_ did _say we were confident that you would defeat it. It was wise that you did not underestimate it, though. We recommend you make use of the grief seed you have acquired now. You are dangerously close to dying_."

Ruby brought up her soul gem to her face, the glowing red jewel now tainted with darkness. "I guess I used too much magic trying to fight those things," she said airily, touching grief seed against it.

" _The wolf blood you were covering yourself in was sapping you of magic. We did not predict that you would not notice this._ "

"I don't notice a lot of things," Ruby replied, closing her eyes.

Even without looking, she could feel the grief seed purging her gem of impurities. Within seconds, the fatigue was gone and her dulled sense of time was cured.

"I guess this is it... This is my life now... I'm a magical girl." She opened her eyes and stared at her soul gem, once again shining brightly, not a single speck of darkness visible within it. "And from now on, I'll be facing all the suffering that comes with it... that's... _great_..."

After a spending moment more to continue staring at her gem, Ruby hopped back to her feet and tossed the use grief seed to Kyubey who swallowed it into some interdimensional pocket in its back. It was weird to look at but Ruby didn't comment.

She turned to her mother's grave. The faint outline of the white figure she saw in the witch labyrinth waved at her before fading away. Ruby smiled and waved back.

" _Would you say that you are satisfied with your wish, Ruby Rose?_ "

Ruby sighed. "Too soon to say. It's not exactly what I wanted but..."

" _It was the closest thing you were capable of achieving,_ " Kyubey reminded.

Ruby chuckled. "Yeah, it was... and maybe the closest thing is close enough..."

" _What is your plan now, Ruby Rose? Will you be looking for your sister?_ "

Ruby shook her head. "Nah. She can take care of herself. I just wanna make sure that when she come home, she still has a home to come back to." With that, she started walking for the exit, dusting herself off as she did so.

" _If that is so then our work here is done. Until we meet again, Ruby Rose._ "

Kyubey had remained where it stood when Ruby began walking. She didn't need to look back to know it had already disappeared. That was fine. It was done with her. And all things considered, she was done with it. She had gotten what she wanted. A chance to be a hero and a chance to see her mother again. What more could she have asked for?

Well, now that she thought about it, there was a lot more she could have asked for. But that wasn't really how things worked. If she wanted more, she'd need to work for it on her own. Besides, she had magic now. It gave her a lot of options.

"I have magic now," she breathed again, still not quite believing it. "Sure, I don't have a soul anymore and I'm pretty much doomed to die in battle but... I'm a magical girl now... I beat a witch... I can be a hero... I can see my mom again..."

Ruby's heart soared with a happiness she couldn't quite fathom. She repeated those words to herself, whispering them all the way home...

* * *

 **I did not intend for this chapter to be as long as it is but dammit nothing ever goes as planned.**

 **I was speaking with people on the /r/MadokaMagica discord about my** ** _other_** **crossover story involving these two fandoms and the topic of a crossover wherein RWBY characters become magical girls came up. A few hours of theory crafting later, I was struck with inspiration to write this story.**

 **First things first, let me talk about the setting. This is not set in a world where there are Grimm, semblances, and aura. RWBY's magic system** ** _does not work_** **with the magic system that the magical girls of Madoka Magica employ. Ruby and the rest of her team are not huntresses in training, they are just regular girls. They do not live on Remnant. They live on Earth. The city of Vale is just a fictional city set in an unspecified western country (I say western because I'm Asian and live in Asia).**

 **Regarding how I translated Ruby's powers from RWBY into this crossover, simply put, I didn't. The same goes with Yang. All of team RWBY have a new power sets for this story. From what we know of their character, they would wish for things that wouldn't necessarily give them the same powers as they did in RWBY. I still made an effort to make their powers similar to their originals but many tweaks had to be made. And even now, I'm still not entirely sure how I'm gonna go about Weiss and Blake's side of the story.**

 **Speaking of which...**

 **My original plan was to have this story be four chapters long and detail team RWBY's rise and fall as magical girls. This chapter would tell Ruby's story, the next one Yang's, and so on. Unfortunately, midway through writing this chapter, I came across the issue of there being way too much story for one character to comfortably cram into one chapter.**

 **I was then faced with a dilemma. Continue writing the same story I had originally planned and risk this story turning into another long-fic (which I don't want) or cut out a whole bunch of stuff and just write the parts about this crossover that I'm actually interested in. I haven't really decided yet.**

 **But hey, it's not so much that there are** ** _only_** **two choices but a spectrum of choices. We'll see what I end up doing in future chapters.**

 **One last word before I wrap up.  
Thank you to ****_The 13th Heretic_** **and** ** _Cloaked_One_** **from the /r/MadokaMagica discord for helping theory craft the crossover concept and doing some beta-reading on this chapter. This story wouldn't have happened without you.**

 **To all my readers, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. May we meet again in the next one.**


	2. Troubles with Road Trips

**Chapter 2: Troubles with Road Trips**

* * *

It was just past midnight as Yang Xiao Long trudged through the streets with her hands in her pockets, the amber yellow of the streetlights casting dark shadows over her face as she walked past. Not a soul was awake.

She didn't know the name of the city she was in - quite frankly, she didn't really care. As far as she was concerned, it was just some small town in the middle of nowhere. The only reason she was even sticking around was because it was on the way to her destination and she needed to resupply. And with the duffel bag over her shoulders stuffed with food, water, and other essentials, all that was left was finding a grief seed to keep her safety cache topped off.

She was just over a week into her search for her mother and had traveled roughly a thousand miles. She'd say it was an impressive feat considering it was all on foot but, as a magical girl with superhuman speed and stamina, she was a bit disappointed in her progress. Because of her wish, she knew exactly where to find her mother and knew that she still had another thousand miles to go. That number gave her no comfort.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, she debated on just running full sprint towards her destination without stopping. If she started right then, she'd probably arrive within three days. Unfortunately, she knew didn't have enough magic to sustain _that_ much running - especially not when every city she passed through had witches or hostile magical girls she had to contend with.

Yang stopped under a streetlight and eyed the alleyway to her side. From her pockets she removed her soul gem, its golden light flashing brightly. The pulses she felt from it had gotten steadily stronger and faster as she walked. It reached its peak when she arrived where she stood, her gem practically screaming at her to take another step towards the alley.

And take a step she did, feeling a notable chill run up her spine when was greeted with a flashing circular rainbow with an emoji cat-face. It was just what she was looking for: the entrance to a witch's labyrinth.

"Someone's fighting that thing," Yang quietly noted, the entrance rippling and distorting violently before her. From within it, she heard the distant sounds of clashing metal and shrill screaming.

She stared for a moment, debating on whether it was worth joining the fray and taking the spoils for herself. It was certainly something she knew could do. The other girl would be exhausted from fighting the witch - she wouldn't be able to fight back. And even if she still had lots of magic left, Yang's powers easily allowed her shatter the other girl's soul gem. It would be so easy - even easier than killing the witch herself...

Yang shook her head and turned away. As tempting as it was, she was not about to kill another magical girl - not again. The very fact that she had considered it to be an option made disgust and shame well up inside her.

"There always has to be some kind of moral dilemma." Yang grumbled. "Why can't everything just be simple?" She began to walk away only to be stopped by a sudden realization. "She's losing..."

Wide-eyed, she turned back towards the entrance, the circular rainbow still rippling but at a far lower intensity. Usually that meant that the witch was in its final throes before death, its labyrinth collapsing around it. The fact that the entrance was still in motion and sounds of combat could still be heard meant that the witch was still alive and magical girl inside was still struggling. She might have been critically injured or run out of magic, which gave the witch the upper hand. Yang was not confident that she'd survive.

"Why aren't you running...?" Yang whispered through her grit teeth. "You're gonna die..."

The struggle continued for a few seconds longer until seconds became minutes. All motion within the entrance had ceased but the sound of clashing metal continued. Yang could tell that no actual battle was occurring. The witch was merely playing with its food.

At this point, it became clear to Yang that she was the only person who'd be able to kill the witch. Upon that realization, she didn't even hesitate. With a flash of gold, she transformed and jumped into the entrance, plunging into an incomprehensible world of neon lights in every color imaginable.

* * *

The brightness and colors made the labyrinth visually overwhelming. It took a moment for Yang's eyes to adjust. And when she did, she found herself in an amusement park that spanned endlessly in every direction. The ground was like a dance floor, flashing rhythmically into different colors; as were the walls and roofs of every building in sight. The sky above was pure black but that only seemed to make the brightness of her surroundings all the brighter. And most striking of all, there were thousands upon thousands of people with smile-emoji masks wandering aimlessly about the amusement park grounds like a horde of extremely happy zombies.

 _Not masks. Faces,_ Yang thought as all the zombies within view watched her as intently she watched them. _These are all familiars..._

Surprisingly, the sea of familiars parted to make a clear path deeper into the labyrinth. She could sense that the path lead towards the witch. Was this a trap? Probably. That didn't really matter. It was an easy way to her destination so she took it.

 _This has got to be the biggest welcoming committee I've ever seen. Total members: A bajillion,_ Yang thought with a sardonic smirk as she sprinted onward, her yellow robes and hair flowing wildly behind her.

Not even a minute into the labyrinth, Yang started hearing voices - an unseen chorus that spoke an unholy language. For whatever reason, Yang understood what the voices were telling her.

 _"Why so serious?"_ the chorus said. " _Stop and play! Have a little fun!_ "

Yang couldn't help but be unnerved by how the voices echoed in her mind. She suspected that it was the voice of the witch that created the labyrinth. Of course, she couldn't let a witch's taunts stop her. She grit her teeth and kept running.

 _"That frown on your face makes you look really boring,"_ the chorus continued. _"And yellow really isn't your color. Why don't we spice things up - bring some life to your blandness?"_

"Get out of my head!" Yang yelled, already ducking under one of the emoji-faced familiars that pounced her from behind. Right as it landed and turned towards her, she delivered a straight punch with an armored hand to the familiar's head.

Yang didn't stop to watch the familiar drop to the ground from being decapitated. She could already sense at least a dozen more familiars' intent to kill her. She dispatched them all right as they came, golden explosions and dismembered corpses flying every which way as she continued charging.

The pathway started curving, leading her towards the entrance to a roller coaster. Yang had to admit, the idea of going on a twisted witch-labyrinth version of roller coaster sounded really fun. But at the same time, the path was no longer leading her towards the witch. She needed to make a path of her own.

With a savage cry, Yang barreled through the wall of familiars trying to herd her towards the wrong direction. Immediately, the horde went into a frenzy.

" _You're no fun, blondie! The ride was right there! Turn back!_ " the chorus screamed as a mass of smiling faces began to pile around Yang, clawing at her and impairing her movement. There were too many of them for her to avoid. Yang could only grit her teeth as she felt sharp flashes of pain all across her body. Quickly she dulled those sensations.

"I don't have time for this!"

Yang wrestled some space for herself and then slammed her gauntlets towards the ground, creating a kinetic explosion that blasted away every familiar within ten feet of her. Yang then repeated the action in tandem with a jump, creating an explosion at her feet which sent her flying towards her destination.

 _"Lookie, lookie! A circus girl doing flips!"_ the chorus said, followed by a cacophony of laughter that drowned out every sound in Yang's ears.

"Shut up!"

This had to be the most annoying witch Yang had ever faced.

Yang landed on the roof of a carousel and took a moment to catch her breath. She could sense that the witch was close by - how close, she couldn't really say. If she used her powers, she'd be able to find its exact location. She might even find the other magical girl that was still trapped in the labyrinth - if that girl was still alive, of course.

Yang noticed familiars were starting to climb up to where she was resting so performed another explosive jump and landed on the top another building some fifty feet away.

Right as she began to debate on whether or not to use her powers, she shook her head. "No thinking, just act," Yang said to herself. With that, she closed her eyes sent out a pulse.

In the brief moment between the activation of her detection powers and actually finding what she was looking for, Yang was once again struck by how she ended up in the situation she was in.

She had wished to find her mother and ask why she left all those years ago. Somehow, that wish manifested into powers of detection. And it didn't stop at finding things that were hidden. She could literally sense the intentions of anyone around her. Assuming she wasn't hopelessly outmatched or hopelessly outnumbered, she was effectively unbeatable. It was honestly just dumb luck that the witch she found had exactly the kind of labyrinth and familiars that she was ill-equipped to face.

Yang opened her eyes and grimaced. The witch was eagerly waiting for her at the bumper car tracks within the warehouse-like building around fifty feet to the south. The other magical girls were unconscious in the top most car of the ferris wheel just under a hundred feet to the north.

Yang swore under her breath. Did there really have to be _two_ magical girls in the opposite direction of where she needed to go? That had to be a joke, a trap, or some delaying tactic. Yang was all too aware of it... but she knew she'd fall for it anyway...

"Oh, dammit all!"

Yang bounded off towards the two magical girls, blasting her landing zone clear with a few well-placed magical projectiles shot from her gauntlets. She broke into a run as soon as her boots hit the ground, already charging for another explosive jump.

 _"First you ignore the rides, now you head straight for them! Make up your mind, blondie!"_

"I said shut it!"

Yang jumped.

After a few seconds soaring through the air, she crashed through the windows of the top-most ferris wheel car and rolled face-first into a wall. Admittedly, it wasn't her most graceful of landings. She scrambled to get back to her feet, ignoring all the blood dripping from the hundreds of cuts she must have gotten from the broken glass. She had other things she needed to worry about.

The two magical girls were indeed on the train car and they were very much alive... although... _alive_ was stretching things a little...

Grimly, Yang pried two soul gems from the cold dead fingers of a disembodied hand - the owner of which was probably one of the magical girls. "This witch is fucked up," she muttered, struggling to suppress a sudden outpouring of rage and disgust. She pocketed the soul gems, kicked the carriage door open, and bounded back towards the witch.

Why keep them alive? Their soul gems were dark - _really_ dark - but they weren't _that_ close to running out of magic. Why had the witch kept the gems? Why not destroy them? All those questions swam in the back of her mind as she blasted a hole through the roof of the building housing the witch.

" _Spice it up, blondie! Show me a smile!_ "

Yang looked up at the witch and saw a giant cat glowing neon colors, pinned gruesomely to the ground with flashing chains and barbed wire. Its face was a Cheshire-smile with large curious eyes. Its paws had been torn off, bloody bandages wrapped around the stumps of its legs. Two pairs of roller skates lay in a pile before it, well within its reach but obviously unusable.

Yang could only shake her head in confusion. Could this witch even fight back?

" _Smile, blondie!_ " the chorus repeated while Yang stared at the witch. It stared directly back, the unnervingly wide smile seeming to grow even wider as the chorus continued to egg her on.

Yang could sense something was wrong. The witch wasn't moving. There weren't even any familiars close by to defend it. This couldn't be it, could it? How was this witch able to take out two magical girls?

Yang pulled back for a punch, expecting some sort of counter attack.

It came like lightning. A glowing pillar of energy erupted from the ground around the witch, completely vaporizing her right arm as she moved to attack. Yang couldn't have avoided it. The moment she sensed it coming, it was already too late.

Yang jumped away from the witch, clutching her cauterized stump. She glared at it. All the while, the chorus cackled around her.

" _Suits you right for being mean!_ "

Regrowing the arm would take a lot of magic and a lot of time - both of which she did not have. Already, her soul gem's attempt at healing the damage was eating heavily into her reserves. She needed to take out the witch quickly or she'd bleed out energy until she disappeared. It was either that or...

 _Run_.

The moment it became a thought it her mind, Yang immediately summoned a large kinetic explosion to launch herself away - back towards the entrance.

Not killing the witch would mean it would just continue getting stronger. But continuing to try would mean she'd die before she got her wish. Getting a grief seed would have been nice but she knew when she couldn't win. She'd rather live.

* * *

Yang collapsed into the bed of a hotel room she had broken into and started writhing in pain.

For a good ten minutes after exiting the labyrinth, she had been running through the streets with her sense of touch suppressed. After finding a relatively safe place, she felt it a good time to return her sensations to normal. In the instant she did so, all the pain she had shrugged off came crashing down on her. Never in her life did she ever think she'd experience this much anguish. She thought she would just feel a little tingly - maybe even a little sore. That's what it was like before, even with grievous injuries so she expected no different. But no, that was not the case at all. She nearly blacked out from how much it hurt.

It was her magic, she realized. It was still trying to heal her arm. Normally, her sense of pain would have been dulled automatically by exactly the right amount so that she couldn't feel her flesh being rewoven and her bones being rebuilt. By deliberately turning _on_ her pain, she must have made it so that she _could_ feel it.

After several minutes of squirming, Yang decided she couldn't take it. She'd rather suffer from sluggish movements than be crippled by pain. She detached herself from her physical body and let the utter lack of sensation calm her mind.

"I'm in over my head," Yang muttered in realization, eyes fixed to a crack in the ceiling.

A witch had rendered her at roughly half strength by _instantly vaporizing her arm_. She hadn't been able to kill said witch because of said vaporization injury so she'd have to eat into her grief seed cache to have enough power to heal herself. That wasn't even accounting for the two soul gems she had snatched from the literal clutches of death.

There was too much to think about and she needed a second opinion.

" _Kyubey?_ " she broadcasted, knowing full well how silly it was asking the creature for help.

It had been nearly a three days since Kyubey had spoken with Yang. Usually it came to her while she was in transit, appearing at the side of the road or on the roof of a building and making small talk via telepathy from a distance. The only time Yang ever called out to it was when she was still in Vale. She wasn't sure if it would even hear her, much less respond.

She was surprised, however.

" _Yes, Yang Xiao Long?_ " Kyubey's voice said to her shortly after Yang's mental transmission.

" _I found two soul gems in a witch labyrinth. What do I do with them?_ "

There was a feeling of surprise in Kyubey's response. " _Ah, the Malachite twins. They were never very powerful but they worked well together. I trust that you have cleansed their soul gems of grief?_ "

Yang sat up and looked at the two red and blue eggs on the table across the room. Even from a distance, she could see the darkness churning inside them.

 _"Uhh... Not yet_ ," she thought. " _I don't know why, but that witch didn't kill them even though they were basically dead. When I tried to escape with the gems, it didn't try very hard to trap me inside, either. Really weird._ "

Kyubed stepped into the hotel room from the window and jumped onto the table. " _Interesting_ ," it said, examining the soul gems.

Yang rolled her eyes. Typical that the first thing the rat would do was look at the disembodied gems as opposed to the injured contractee.

" _Just so you know, there are consequences to allowing a soul gem to get this dark. We recommend you cleanse them immediately._ "

Yang gave Kyubey a wry smile and raised her glowing stump. Nearly her entire forearm had been regrown but she still did not have a wrist and hand. "After this, okay? This is kind of a higher priority thing, if you catch my drift."

" _We do not agree but if you insist_."

Yang could almost detect a hint of dry humor in that concession. It was probably nothing, though.

She adjusted her position on the bed so that she was sitting more comfortably. "Tell me about Ruby. How's she doing?"

" _Ruby Rose is doing wonderfully. She is one of the most powerful contractees in your city. Ever since she took over your territory, grief seed harvesting in Vale has had a nearly six percent rise in efficiency._ "

Yang nodded thoughtfully at this. She didn't really understand what a _'nearly six percent rise in efficiency'_ meant but numbers had gone up and that was probably a good thing. Kyubey certainly seemed happy at the very least - or the closest approximation to happy that a creature like him could muster.

"How's my dad?"

" _Taiyang Xiao Long is still distraught over your disappearance. Investigations are still being conducted and search parties are still being sent all across Vale and the surrounding cities and states. We do not believe these searches and investigations will bear fruit unless you decide to turn yourself in._ "

Yang sighed. She would have _loved_ to turn herself in right then and there but she still had places to be and things to do. She wasn't about to stop after she had already come so far.

" _We would like to reiterate that those soul gems require grief seeds immediately. Failure to administer them will prove unhelpful to your goals._ "

Yang groaned. "Alright, alright. No need to get all dramatic."

She got out of bed and removed a pouch from her belt containing a number of grief seeds. She plucked one and placed it near the gems. A slow and steady stream of black energy began seeping from out of the gems into the grief seed. She watched this happen for a moment before moving to returning to the bed.

"What's the problem with soul gems going dark anyway?" she asked idly.

Yang sat and watched darkness slowly drain out of the gems. She then frowned. Kyubey wasn't answering? That was strange...

" _We do not recommend asking questions like that, Yang Xiao Long,_ " the creature finally replied.

Yang rolled her eyes. "There you go being vague again. This is why so many magical girls die, you know? They never know what they're getting themselves into."

" _Knowledge of this has proven dangerous for magical girls to possess. It has been known to shorten their lifespans..._ "

Yang crossed her arms, her right hand now fully regrown. "Kyubey," she growled.

The creature stared blankly. " _You will not like what you are about to hear..._ "

"I'll be the judge of that."

* * *

" _Since you have taken the liberty of saving Melanie and Miltiades Malachite, their fates are now in your hands. Do with them what you wish."_

Yang would admit that finding out the relationship between witches and magical girls had been a shock - but no more a shock than finding out that her soul had been ripped out of her body. Somehow it just didn't surprise her as much. And thinking back, it made sense. A grief seed was a witch's egg. A soul gem was a magical girl's egg. Knowing that, everything just sort of clicked.

 _"We would also like to remind you that simply allowing them to remain as dormant gems will be a disservice to the universe and a liability to yourself. We recommend you do something with them at your earliest convenience._ "

Her lack of surprise did not make her feel better about it, however...

* * *

Yang bit her lip in frustration as she landed on a rooftop overlooking a rotunda in the middle of the town. Immediately after confirming that she was back in tip-top shape, she had returned to patrolling with increased vigor. She had hoped to find another, hopefully _easier_ witch to take down. She had been searching for an hour now and still no luck.

 _"The population of this town is small enough that witches do not commonly spawn here,"_ Kyubey said helpfully from its place on Yang's shoulder. _"The ones that do are usually very weak. The witch you fought earlier is an anomaly in that it is more powerful than most witches spawned within a rural area such as this. What's more, it seems wholly uninterested in preying on normal humans and preys on magical girls instead._ "

"Yeah. I noticed," Yang muttered dryly.

She checked her soul gem again for any nearby magic. Still nothing. "You know what? Screw it. I'm sending out a pulse. If there's any other witch in this city, I'm gonna find it."

" _Is it truly wise for you to consume magic for a long range sweep?_ "

Technically, Kyubey was right to be wary of Yang using her detection powers. Said powers used increasingly more magic proportional to the size of the search area. The city was pretty small, being a rural city and all, but its total area was still bigger than the territory she once controlled back in Vale.

Of course, Yang ignored Kyubey and activated her detection powers anyway. She was tired, irritable, and didn't have enough magic to justify counteracting the negative effects of sleep deprivation - she still had a day of travel ahead of her. If she was to kill any witches that night, she needed to find one as soon as possible which entailed using her detection.

Unfortunately, it still resulted in failure. Not a single witch could be found. All she saw was the witch of neon lights she had retreated from earlier.

"Welp, _that_ was pointless," Yang muttered, jumping to another rooftop. "I wasted an hour of moonlight patrolling an empty city." She scowled at the creature of her shoulder. "Why didn't you tell me this city had nothing? You could have saved me a lot of time."

" _Our operational directives include not giving any unnecessary information to contractees unless they ask for it._ " Kyubey said plainly. " _You and your sister should know this already. You need only ask the right question and we shall answer it truthfully._ "

"You didn't tell me because I didn't ask?" Yang grumbled, jumping to yet another rooftop.

 _"Precisely."_

Yang frowned. "Fantastic," she said dryly.

 _"Fantastic indeed. Will that be all, Miss Xiao Long? If so, I will take my leave."_

Yang's frown deepened. Was it actually trying to be funny or was its sarcasm accidental? Either way, it only soured her mood even more.

She rolled her eyes one last time and grumbled, "Yeah yeah, just leave already."

" _A single 'yes' will suffice_ ," Kyubey said. Shortly after, it hopped off Yang's shoulder and disappeared.

Dejectedly, Yang returned to the hotel room she had broken into and spent the rest of the night getting some shut-eye.

* * *

It had been two days now since Yang had rescued the two magical girls from the labyrinth of neon lights and amusement park rides. Since then, she had traversed another two hundred or so miles to a different rural town.

Fortunately, she had found and killed another witch. Unfortunately, her safety cache still wasn't as healthy as it had been a few days ago. With how many miles she still had left, she feared she might not have enough to sustain herself _and_ the two extra gems she now carried.

Not that having extra gems mattered much. The rate of passive decay for dormant soul gems was slower than that of active ones. Yang could still keep herself bright with only one grief seed a day while keeping the other two gems bright as well.

But that was all assuming she did nothing but run all day. Any arduous battle would require at least one extra seed. She had been lucky for the past week or so in that she had been encountering multiple witches that had been quite easy to kill. Encounters like the one with the witch of neon lights had only happened twice. Had she encountered any more, surely she would have been much more desperate to find more grief seeds.

As it stood, she was doing fine. Still, she needed to find and kill more witches.

* * *

Yang was starting to get homesick. It felt so long ago since she was last in Vale and yet it had only been a month. It was probably because she was taking far longer to make her journey than she expected to. Progress had slowed considerably.

Yang was crossing a remote region and every town she passed by was little more than a few houses and shops with scattered farm houses in the surrounding areas - too small for a witch to spawn unless a nomadic magical girl happened to fall there. Very rarely did she find a city with enough people that she that had any chance of encountering witches. Every time she reached such a city, she had to spend a day or two just hunting and resting.

The two soul gems she had rescued were not helping. While she had originally found that the accumulation of grief within their gems was negligible, they also had other side effects that she did not expect nor enjoy.

She had taken to wearing the gems as rings together with her own - it was more convenient than having glowing rocks burning a hole in her pockets. Doing so had the unfortunate side effect of allowing Yang to _feel_ the emotional states of the disembodied girls in the exact moment of their body-loss. Slowly but surely, those feelings were wearing down her emotional fortitude. Her grief seed consumption per week was steadily rising as a result.

Kyubey had been right. Keeping the gems as they were was a liability to herself. The only question was: what she was going to do with them?

* * *

Another week had passed and she had only progressed another hundred miles. In that time, her grief seed supply had run out and she was forced to remain in the same city she to hunt. Thankfully, it was much higher population city than the last few she had visited so witches were common enough that she could sustain herself.

Not common enough to continue her journey, however.

The city she was in was much larger than the territory she controlled in Vale and yet she seemed to be encountering less than half as many witches. It didn't make sense. Vale couldn't possibly have that much higher population than a rural city, could it?

Yang had been hunting for three days and had only found three witches in that time - the first and seconds being ones she had found and killed on her first hunt and the third being the one she was currently tracking down. The trail had led her to what looked to be an abandoned nightclub near a train station. She could feel the three gems she held in her hand pulsating as she drew near.

"This is gonna be terrible, I just know it," Yang muttered, breaking apart the chains barring the entrance. Immediately upon doing so, an intricate floral pattern appeared before her. "You better be worth it."

With a sigh and a shake of her head, Yang flashed gold and jumped into the labyrinth.

* * *

The witch was _not_ worth it. Yang came to that conclusion fifteen minutes after she started fighting it and was now well into her fortieth minute. The witch wasn't even difficult to fight. It was just tedious.

The labyrinth quite literally a glass bowl of chocolate and strawberry ice cream. Not only was it freezing cold, all the terrain was slippery and there was no flat ground. The witch took the shape of a doll, roughly the shape and size of a small girl who couldn't have been older than six. It moved with grace like a ballerina, spinning around in high heels, somehow completely ignoring how slippery the terrain was. Its familiars were all icy umbrellas that had icy copies of the doll dancing around in unison.

Yang took fifteen minutes to figure out the trick to killing the witch and was not at all happy with what she realized.

The witch could occupy one of its many copies and would jump to a different one every time Yang tried to go for any lethal blow. The solution to it, she realized, was to destroy every single familiar in the labyrinth. Doing so would mean she needed to destroy familiars faster than the witch could spawn them.

Her fist met another familiar and it shattered to a million pieces. She then looked down at the gem on her belly button. It was already halfway filled with grief and she had barely used any magic.

"Stupid gems," she grumbled, punting another familiar.

* * *

Yang set her gems and grief seed atop the table of another hotel room she had broken into and then unceremoniously collapsed onto the bed. She felt the unpleasant tension inside her slowly unravel as the seed siphoned the darkness from her gem. She let out a sigh of relief.

Fighting the witch earlier had been frustrating to the point of unbridled fury. During the battle, she could sense how her emotional state was increasing her soul gem's rate of decay. Even worse were the two _other_ soul gems which seemed to be treating her own gem like a grief seed, transferring negative energy from themselves to Yang. She was lucky she had won when she did. Had the fight lasted any longer, she would have fallen to despair.

With that unpleasant thought, Yang sat up on the bed and looked across the room to the gems on the table. All three were barely glowing and the grief seed was already fully saturated - almost ready to turn back into a witch. Kyubey was also sitting atop the table eyeing the grief seed.

Yang didn't greet the creature. Kyubey matched Yang's silence and merely took the saturated grief seed and scurried out of the window. Yang watched wordlessly as the creature disappeared from view.

She then turned to the gems once more, grimacing.

She needed to _do something_ about them. She couldn't just let them keep injecting grief into her system. Eventually, all three of them would turn into witches. She had no desire to lose herself to despair.

The first thing she thought of was dropping the gems. She could leave them and let some other magical girl deal with their witches. It wouldn't be the first time. Hell, her acquisition of the gems had her doing exactly that, leaving a witch for some other better equipped girl to kill.

Yang's frown deepened.

She couldn't bring herself to do that, though. She had _rescued_ them from a witch labyrinth. She was the only reason they weren't witches already. After coming so far, was she really just going to let it happen?

No. She couldn't do it. Her conscience wouldn't allow it.

She could justify all day how she only killed witches and fellow magical girls for her survival but she had to draw the line somewhere. Letting someone turn into witch when she could prevent it was where she drew that line. She'd rather just kill them than let that happen.

Yang continued to stare grimly at the soul gems, realizing where her thoughts had brought her.

That was it, then, wasn't it? She needed to kill them. After all the trouble she took to keep them alive, she needed to pull the trigger on them. Was that some sort of sick joke? It had to be, right?

Yang closed her eyes and sighed - a gesture she felt like she had been doing a lot lately.

It wasn't a joke. The reality of her situation was all too clear to her. She had to do it. She was going to turn into a witch if she did _anything_ else. She _had_ to do it...

With a heavy silence, Yang left the hotel room and took the gems to a nearby rooftop where she set them a short distance in front of her. She then flashed gold into her combat attire.

" _You have made up your mind_?" the voice of Kyubey rang in her mind. Yang didn't even need to look to know that the creature was right behind her. " _Most wonderful. We are pleased to see you are no longer wasting precious energy_ ," Kyubey continued, padding to Yang's side.

"Yeah," Yang muttered. "I need to do this."

" _We disagree that you_ need _to do this. The more pragmatic choice would have been to let them fall to despair. Melanie and Miltiades Malachite weren't powerful contractees. They would not have been very powerful witches either. However, it_ is _clear to us that this option will give the most favorable results for your survival, considering your mental state. We do not fault you for choosing it._ "

Yang rolled her eyes and smiled dryly at the incubator. "Was that your idea of a pep talk?"

Kyubey stared back ever stoically. " _Good luck, Yang Xiao Long. We are confident that you will survive the fallout caused by your actions tonight._ "

Yang's wry smile remained as she turned back toward the two gems. She took a deep breath and raised an armored hand, holding it up with his other hand. "Right... This is it..."

Yang concentrated on one soul gem, intent on making a small kinetic explosion that would completely shatter the gem without affecting anything else. She felt energy build up inside her. When she felt like it was enough, she snapped her fingers.

There was a sharp cracking sound and the dimly glowing gem on the left erupted into a cloud of red powder. She repeated the action on the other one. Pure silence followed afterward as the red and blue dust mingled in the wind.

" _It is done_ ," Kyubey said from her side. " _Your wish still awaits you, Yang Xiao Long. Do not dwell on this event for too long or you may never see it fulfilled. Again, we wish you the best of luck._ "

With that, Kyubey padded away, no doubt disappearing as always.

Yang smiled sadly at the anticlimax of destroying the gems. It had been so easy. Like popping bubble wrap. And to think she had walked away from killing them when she encountered that witch labyrinth nearly a month ago. Never did she expect that she'd end up doing exactly that anyway.

"What the hell am I even doing...?"

Yang shook her head and retreated back to the hotel room. Sleep did not come easy for her that night. Nor any night for the next few weeks...

* * *

 **Thus another chapter ends.**

 **Once again, I thank discord user 14th Madman (13th Heretic) from the r/MadokaMagica discord for helping with the theorycrafting of Yang's moveset as well as helping me get past a scene I was stuck on.  
**

 **I hope you enjoyed. Until next chapter.**


	3. Thanatophobia—Border of Life and Death

**Nearly a year between updates. Honestly, not even my worst hiatus.**

 **Happy New Year's, everyone. Here's a Blake chapter that's as long as the previous two combined. Enjoy if you can.**

* * *

…

* * *

Blake Belladonna sat quietly behind the cashier desk of a small bookstore in downtown Vale. She was reading an old fairy tale about a man with two souls—a quaint story that she hoped would carry her through the more boring hours of her day job. Her boss had recommended it to her, actually. It had been nice of him.

Tukson's Book Trade didn't get many customers on weekdays during school and work hours, unfortunately. At the moment, it was just the odd few adults stopping by for a quick look. It at least gave her the peace and quiet she needed to read.

A ghost of a smile tugged at Blake's lips when she turned the page. She traced a line across the paper with her fingers, following the vivid yet fantastical description of the main character's soul leaving his body. She could almost laugh. There was no mention of the unbelievable pain it entailed. It just spoke of the all-consuming emptiness of the void followed by an inexplicably bright warm light just within arms reach. It was so similar to what Blake herself had experience when she made a contract with Kyubey, yet it just skirted past the more memorable, albeit unsavory details. So close, yet so far.

Blake shook her head.

She then remembered that the book she was reading was, in fact, written for children. Detailed description of the overwhelming agony of becoming a magical girl—agony that a normal human was unlikely to ever experience—was probably too much for such a story. An old fairy tale or not, a children's book did not need that.

Blake's reading halted when she felt the presence of magic nearby. It was faint—a drop in the bucket for a city as dense as Vale—but it was close and it was familiar. It was probably a block or two away, by the edge of her territory.

And it wasn't a witch.

Blake knew who it was—a magical girl she had encountered just a month prior who wielded a scythe and wore a white and red cloak. She still remembered their first meeting and the rather bloody clash that followed.

The reaper was a fairly nice girl, all things considered. In another life, they could have become friends. But being _nice_ didn't mean Blake would just let her territory be encroached by a rival magical girl without making contact. She quickly sent out a mental probe.

 _"Ruby Rose,"_ Blake said in a telepathic equivalent to a growl.

Internally, she cursed. She intended to sound threatening but didn't quite get there—she sounded _curious_ , moreso. It still achieved the same results, however.

The emotions of surprise and confusion surged into Blake through the mental connection with Ruby. _"BLAKE…! Blake… Right… Hi…"_

Blake lifted her gaze from her book and looked over the counter. Through the window, across the street, her eyes zeroed in on Ruby who was smiling apologetically and waving at her amidst the pedestrian crowds. Blake raised an eyebrow.

 _"What are you doing here, Ruby? We agreed to stay out of each other's territory."_

Ruby clapped her hands together and bowed. _"Yes, I know, but I reeaally need to go to this drug store that's in your part of the city. It's the closest one to my house. Pleeeaaase let me pass?"_

Blake felt her neutral stare falter at Ruby's hopeful innocence. It didn't help that she could feel the reaper girl's emotions clearly through their telepathic link.

It was disconcerting, feeling foreign emotions so vividly through telepathy. That wasn't supposed to happen and yet it _always_ happened when Blake spoke with Ruby. The girl was just so unguarded with her emotions that it was almost uncomfortable to talk to her.

But Blake still had to admit, the genuineness Ruby displayed was a breath of fresh air.

The fact that Ruby was on an errand also gave her something of a pass.

Blake gave Ruby a mental sigh and conceded. _"Fine. Whatever. Get what you need."_

She then felt an influx of gratitude so strong that she'd describe it as overbearing. _"Thank you, Blake!"_ Ruby squealed in her mind.

Blake rolled her eyes even as her lips curled up wryly. _"Yes, yes. Please just go quickly. Errand or not, if other girls see you freely roaming my territory, they're gonna start getting ideas."_

A mental hum came from Ruby as she started walking away. _"Seriously, Blake, you don't need to get so antsy every time another magical girl steps onto your turf. Everyone's open to hunt on mine and I_ never _get problems."_

Blake snorted. _"That's because people are scared of you, Ruby. Not everyone can turn into a literal ghost that can't be touched or killed."_

With that, she severed their telepathic link and returned to her book. As she did so, she twitched with mild curiosity. Blake could have sworn that, just before she cut the connection, Ruby was _surprised_ to hear other magical girls were scared of her.

To that, Blake rolled her eyes once more. Ruby Rose wore a hooded cloak, used a scythe, and had ghost powers. She was pretty much the archetypical personification of death itself. Why _wouldn't_ people be afraid of her?

Blake's day shift continued without further incident.

* * *

…

* * *

Blake was in a good mood. That night, three witches had spawned in her territory and she had just dispatched two of them with complete and utter ease. She had barely expended any magic and her gem was still a bright violet. She didn't even need to use any grief seeds that night so, for the first time in a long time, she had a surplus of them. She could stop hunting for a week and still have enough to sustain herself.

Of course, she'd still continue the hunt that night. There was still one witch alive and witches left to their own devices would devour more humans and grow in power. Granted, the city of Vale was large and dense enough to support multiple magical girls. Another girl was bound to find and kill it before it got too strong.

It was in Blake's territory, though. If anyone was going to kill that witch, _she_ would be the one to do it. She wouldn't let it happen any other way.

Besides. The night was still young—just reaching midnight. She knew she couldn't sleep _quite_ yet.

Blake landed, light as a feather, atop a streetlight near the edge of her territory. The halogen lamps aimed towards the ground did very little to light her form in the darkness. It helped that her magical girl outfit—tightly fit black robes which she affectionately called her _shadow garb_ —absorbed light in a way that made her almost impossible to see at night.

She touched the soul gem on the base of her neck, hidden by her scarf. She could feel that the witch was close. Its signature was still faint but it was the strongest she'd felt since she found it at the start of her hunt. It wasn't quite strong enough to pinpoint the exact location but she knew it was within a block away. She just needed to scour the entire area for the entrance.

She released a deep sigh, producing an eerie hiss as air passed through the veins of her intricate ivory mask.

As good a night it had been, it just had to be ruined by tedium.

Blake jumped to a rooftop and began the toilsome task of finding the labyrinth entrance. This entailed walking slowly and watching her soul gem's pulse for even the smallest change in tempo and intensity. _Riveting_ , she thought glumly.

As she did so, she felt Ruby's presence once more.

 _"Back off,"_ Blake broadcasted with a snarl, both mentally and by baring her teeth under her mask. _"This is_ my _prey."_

Ruby seemed completely unperturbed by Blake's threatening demeanor and greeted her cheerfully. _"Evening, Blake. If you're looking for that witch with the really weak magic signature, I think I can help you."_

Blake stopped walking across the roof and turned to where she felt Ruby's presence. Atop the roof of a building across the street was Ruby who waved at her with a smile. Blake felt the scowl on her face soften.

 _"I tracked that witch to an apartment building parking lot. I was gonna fight it but it was in your territory so I decided to let you handle it."_

Blake slowly shook her head. "Unbelievable," she breathed, actually saying those words aloud. _"Ruby, if you weren't as strong as you are, you'd have been killed within your first week. Letting go of your prey and letting other people hunt in your territory? That's not how things work. You're supposed to do what you must to survive. Not… whatever it is you think you're doing… You're too_ nice _, Ruby…"_

Ruby regarded Blake for a moment and chuckled. _"You're not wrong,"_ she admitted. _"At the same time, though, magical girls run on morale. A little compassion and optimism can't hurt, right? Every bit of positive emotion goes a long way."_

Blake shifted her weight, unsure of how to respond. Blake wasn't wrong… But Ruby wasn't wrong either…

A moment of silence passed.

 _"Well, I've taken up enough of your time. I'll let you get back to what you were doing."_ Ruby turned away and dissolved into white and red rose petals that slowly drifted off in the night breeze. _"Good hunting, Blake."_

Their connection severed, leaving Blake alone to ponder in darkness.

"What a strange girl," she muttered.

Blake cleared her mind of Ruby's philosophical rambling and set out for the witch.

The parking lot that Ruby had told her of was exactly one block west of her and was surrounded by three-story buildings from all sides. It was barely large enough to fit all the cars of the ground floor residents, let alone those of the residents of entire apartment building. Only one or two residents opted to keep their cars in the lot as opposed to the basement parking garage. Thus, many of the other residents use the outdoor parking lot as recreational space.

Blake snorted in annoyance as the details came rushing back. The only reason she knew any of those details at all was because she once lived in said apartment building. She could still remember what it was like living there—noisy and chaotic. She had always hated it.

Less than ten seconds later, Blake landed on one of the buildings overlooking the parking lot and clicked her tongue. She could feel that the witch's labyrinth was there but it was already collapsing. Someone had killed it before she arrived.

 _Whoever this is hunting in my territory doesn't know her place._ Blake set one hand resting on the handle of the wakizashi sheathed on her belt. _I'll need to correct that…_

Reality blurred and rippled for just a second as the labyrinth collapsed completely. A small black spec slowly floated down to the ground in front of a girl in a white dress and jacket, holding her arm out to catch it.

Blake stared intensely at girl in white, taking in as many details as she could.

The girl was probably half a head shorter than Blake. Her waist long hair was tied in an asymmetrical ponytail to the right of her head. Across her forehead, just above her brow, was a metal tiara inset with a pale blue jewel in the middle. She wielded a sword with an extremely thin blade and a cup guard that flared out into four points—a rapier or estoc? Interestingly, she held the weapon with her left hand.

The girl in white's soul gem was clearly visible so there was no worry of accidentally hitting the gem and killing her. The weapon she used was longer than Blake's wakizashi so she'd need to keep very close to stay on even footing—and perhaps take advantage of the white magical girl's hair length whenever she was within arm's reach. But she was also smaller than Blake which meant she had an advantage at close range.

Depending on the white fencer's experience with fighting other magical girls, their battle could go in anyone's favor.

Blake felt a razor thin smile on her lips as she unsheathed her sword.

"You!" Blake called to the girl who had just caught the falling grief seed. Said girl looked up at Blake, wide eyed. "What do you think you're doing, hunting in my territory!?"

The girl in white stared, mouth agape, panic and adrenaline obvious in her eyes. Then a magic circle with a snowflake glyph appeared under her feet and she shot into the sky like a bullet.

Blake immediately jumped after her, sensing the girl use magic to course-correct her flight path _away_ from Blake. She was quickly putting distance between the two of them.

This didn't matter, though. Blake had already used her illusion powers to cast a veil of darkness across a ninety degree cone, extending two hundred feet in front of her. The girl in white could see nothing around her as she soared through the air. She gracelessly slammed into the side of a building, falling into an alleyway.

Blake followed, dropping into the alley, already adjusting her magic darkness to only fill the space between the two entrances. The girl was already up with her rapier held ready, eyes closed and face tense. The moment Blake's boots hit the ground, the fencer attacked.

Blake was forced to deflect a lunging stab with the blade of her wakizashi. The sound of clashing steel rang in her ears as the tip of girl in white's sword flew past her face, just barely grazing her cheek.

Even in complete darkness, she was able to sense Blake with such accuracy?

Blake was not given time to ponder this as the girl in white followed up with a series of stabs, each consecutive thrust arriving faster than the previous one. Blake had nimbly ducked under the first thrust and stepped to the side for the second, but the next few arrived quickly enough that she had to back away to dodge any of them. Once again, she had received a number of grazed hits.

She was better than Blake expected, though not quite good enough.

The girl finished her series of quick stabs with one strong stab which Blake sidestepped, grabbing the girl's throat and throwing her against the wall. Blake then stabbed her wakizashi into the girl's left forearm, the two-foot katana blade easily slitting between her ulna and radius bones. She cried out in pain as she was pinned to the wall.

For the first time, Blake was able to get a good look at the girl's face, which was pale and beautifully smooth. The only thing marring it was a deep scar across her left eye which was shut tightly. The other eye stared deliriously at Blake, colored the same blue of her soul gem. A slow build up of tears streamed down her cheeks.

"What is your name?" Blake asked, deathly calm. The girl in white groaned, alternating between clutching her impaled arm and clutching the hand pressed against her throat.

Blake frowned under her mask and tilted her head slightly. She twisted her sword by a few degrees.

The girl screamed again, losing her grip on her rapier which clattered to the ground.

"Your name," Blake repeated.

"Weiss!" the girl in white gasped. "Weiss Schnee!"

"Weiss Schnee. Pleasure to meet you," Blake said flatly. "My name is Blake. I've never heard of you before so I'm assuming you're new. And because you're new, I'm not gonna kill you for hunting in my territory."

"I didn't… know," Weiss said through her grit teeth.

"No. You didn't," Blake agreed. "My territory is a five square mile rectangle. One corner is Dusk Towers. The other corner is the VNN studio building. If you don't know where those places are then _figure it out_."

She punctuated those last words by releasing Weiss' neck and pulling out her wakizashi. Weiss screamed once more and fell to her knees, holding her injured arm against her chest and soaking her white dress in red. Blake took a step back.

"You didn't know so I didn't kill you." She flicked the blood off sword and sheathed it. "But now you _do_ know. And the next time I catch you hunting in my territory, I will make sure you never will again. Do you understand?"

Weiss sobbed. "Y-yes…"

Blake nodded and started walking away, lifting her veil of darkness. "You can keep the grief seed. Use it to heal your injuries. Make sure I don't see you here again."

With that, Blake left Weiss crying in the alley, bloodied and defeated.

* * *

…

* * *

It was another routine patrol for Blake that night and it had been relatively uneventful. In fact, all of her patrols had been uneventful since that night she had found three witches and fought that fledgling fencer, Weiss. It had been four days since then.

Blake didn't necessarily mind the few days of respite—after all, she still had plenty of magic to spare—but if a witch didn't spawn in her territory soon, she'd need to start hunting less ideal locations.

Blake landed on the roof of the Dusk Towers complex, surveying the surrounding area. She noted how, a block away, the lights were still turned on in the apartment above the bookstore she worked at. Quietly, she wondered what Tukson could be doing so late at night.

She then shook her head. She was out on patrol and needed to focus.

Kneeling down, she closed her eyes and touched her soul gem, sensing the magic around her. There was a small trace of witch magic nearby. It could be another runt whose magic was naturally weak or a witch from very far away. Based on the direction her soul gem seemed to be pointing towards, the current case was likely the latter. The chance was high for her to be sensing a witch residing deep in the warehouse district.

Blake clicked her tongue in dissatisfaction. The warehouse district was dubbed 'neutral territory' due to how no one wanted to claim it as their own. It was justified in that so few witches spawned there. The time investment of patrolling and defending the territory did not match the reward. As a result, any witches that _did_ spawn were usually heavily contested by rival magical girls from the surrounding territories.

Without any hesitation, Blake bounded towards the witch.

Speaking truthfully, Blake wasn't worried about rivals. She had been hunting in Vale for close to six years and had spent all that time fighting to stay on top of the food-chain. She knew how to put other girls in their place and they knew to keep clear of her.

Well… most of them did…

There were some outliers of course—people who were powerful enough to stand as Blake's equal.

Up until a month ago, one of them had been Yang Xiao Long, a formidable blonde bruiser who Blake could never catch off guard. Blake had always liked Yang. She was straightforward and headstrong. She also never hunted in Blake's territory. Blake very much appreciated the respect she got from Yang.

There was also Ruby Rose who had taken over Yang's territory after Yang mysteriously disappeared. Blake wasn't sure what to think about Ruby. Blake could never _quite_ pinpoint what her powers were—just that they involved ghosts and illusions somehow. At least Ruby wasn't a threat, though—too nice for her own good.

Then there were the girls who tested themselves against her because they were either ignorant, stubborn, or just plain stupid. Blake always hated them. Despite how skilled she was at killing other magical girls, it was not something she liked doing. It always felt like a waste of a life. If only they did the smart thing and stayed _away_ from her.

Blake's thoughts inevitably went back to Weiss Schnee, the girl she had almost killed the other day.

Weiss was new. Not new in that she was newly contracted—though that likely was the case—but new in that she was new to Vale.

Kyubey had set up a system for Vale where there would always be barely enough girls to hunt the city clean. Everyone would get their own territory. Anyone extra would either be a replacement for a magical girl who was about to die, a roamer who would eventually leave the city, or someone whose life was on a timer, doomed to fall to despair within a month.

Blake had to wonder… In which of those three categories did Weiss slot into?

She quickly got off that tangent as she reached her destination.

Her boots soundlessly fell atop the roof of a warehouse, completely indistinguishable from the multitude of other warehouses around her. She tapped her foot with impatience as she checked her soul gem once more. The magic trail led her downwards, towards the center of the warehouse.

Nodding, Blake made for a window to enter into. This involved jumping off the edge of the roof and sliding down a wall. Once at a window, she used her wakizashi to cut through the lock mechanism and opened it. She was inside within three seconds.

Blake smiled with a faint bit of satisfaction at how utterly easy it was to break into buildings. All the security in the world couldn't stop a determined magical girl. And even security cameras were useless since any use of magic always caused them to inexplicably lose a few seconds of footage.

Blake's smile immediately vanished when she felt another magic signature enter the warehouse from the front. The ear-splitting groan of the sliding doors was probably audible from a mile away —especially considering how quiet the night was. Quickly, Blake cast a veil across the entire inside of the warehouse, trapping all sound and absorbing all light.

"What do you think you're doing!?" Blake asked dropping to the ground and sprinting to the front entrance. When she saw who it was that had just entered, she immediately rolled her eyes. "Of course it's you."

"Blake?" Weiss Schnee looked vaguely in her direction, raising her rapier pointedly. Blake tilted her head curiously at this. Weiss had fully recovered from the deep wound on her left arm.

Accelerated healing was an extremely common trait among magical girls. To begin with, soul gems already passively increased the rate in which girls heal. An injured girl need only induce the healing deliberately to further increase the rate—though that technique was generally less magic-efficient for girls whose wish did not give them healing magic.

Most newly contracted girls were not aware of this, however. Interesting how Weiss was able to pull it off.

Weiss' face contorted into a snarl. "Stay away from me. We're not in your territory."

Blake shook her head. "No, we're not," she said in agreement. She dismissed her magic darkness. "We're in neutral territory— _contested_ territory. Whoever hunts here must fight for the right to keep the spoils."

Weiss scowled at Blake's words. "You claimed that witch as yours, didn't you?"

"The grief seed it drops can only go to one."

Weiss took a step forward, an aura of killing intent radiating from her. "So I'm gonna have to fight you?"

Blake eyed Weiss with a more wary interest. The fencer showed a defiant ruthlessness that was completely at odds with her behavior during their first clash. Obviously something had changed. Or perhaps she was simply more agitated.

"No. Not yet," Blake said flatly. "Until that witch is dead, we are allies. We work together to kill it." She slowly pushed the tip of Weiss' sword away as she leaned forward. "But once it's dead, you better have some sort of strategy to take me down because I will not yield the grief seed to you."

Weiss wore a look of tempered outrage as she stared intensely at Blake. There was a veritable storm in her pale blue eyes which seemed to glow menacingly. She maintained her gaze for but a moment before she turned away. "Fine," she grumbled, lowering her rapier. "I'll play nice… for now…"

With that begrudging agreement, the two set out to kill the witch.

* * *

…

* * *

Within minutes, they had found the entrance to the labyrinth and were already slaughtering their way into the witch's chamber.

There was little to note of the labyrinth. It was a dense forest of mangled trees and twisted metal spires, all seemingly drawn with chalk on a blackboard. Visibility was limited. Very little light filtered down from the canopy above and their view was blocked by the trees and the hanging vines. Hiding among these vines were the witch's snake familiars, serpentine creatures vaguely drawn in the same chalky style as the rest of the labyrinth.

Blake had seen similar and more impressive labyrinths before. The forest held her interest only as far as the hazards it presented. Weiss Schnee, on the other hand, held Blake's attention far better.

From what Blake surmised based on observation, Weiss' magic involved some sort of telekinesis. She would summon snowflake glyphs around objects and launch them at targets, crush them, or perform some other telekinetic feat. The glaring weakness of her power was how obviously telegraphed it was. The glyph was a dead giveaway that she was about to do something. Any experienced fighter would most definitely be able to take advantage of that.

"Schnee, get ready," Blake said upon slicing a snake familiar in half. Weiss looked at her quizzically. Blake only spared her a glance as she crouched down. "She's coming."

As expected, there was a rush of air as the labyrinth started folding in on itself. The witch was done waiting. It was bringing the fight to them.

When the roar of the wind stopped, they found themselves amidst a large clearing. The night sky above was starless, showing only a shattered moon.

"Oh my god," Weiss breathed. Blake did not share Weiss' shock.

Before them was a large coiled snake with green scales that glittered like emeralds. In place of a head was a hand with eight fingers and covered with eyes. They stared ever stoically at them, seeming to dart between Blake and Weiss randomly.

"Scatter!" Blake ordered, already bounding away. Weiss heard her, loud and clear, and jumped in the opposite direction.

The coiled snake shot forward and struck the ground where Weiss and Blake once stood, imprinting the shape of its eight fingered hand into the earth. Right as it did so, its scales flashed and rippled before becoming completely invisible.

Weiss looked baffled at the witch's disappearance for a moment before something slammed into her and threw her halfway across the clearing. A similar force shoved Blake into a tree, knocking her arm out of its socket.

Blake cursed under her breath in pain. With a surge of magic, she snapped her dislocated shoulder back into place.

She didn't expect it to turn invisible. Though, she could probably use that to her advantage. Witches with illusion powers usually interfered with Blake's own illusion powers. Thankfully, the interference went both ways…

"I'm gonna reveal the witch! Pin it down!"

Hoping that Weiss understood what Blake meant, she sent out a wave of darkness that radiated from her location. The shadows abruptly stopped and dissolved when it touched the witch. Said witch's illusionary camouflage also dissolved, leaving it visible for a moment.

Weiss threw a hand to summon a glyph underneath the witch but was too slow. The witch had sprung away the moment it had been revealed. A second later, its invisibility returned.

Blake growled in annoyance. The witch was moving far too quickly for something that didn't have legs. She sent out another wave of darkness. "Keep trying!"

The two repeated the action three more times before they successfully pinned the witch. The moment they did, both Blake and Weiss jumped in and stabbed it.

The witch convulsed violently from the two swords impaling it, black blood spraying from its wounds. Muffled and distorted screams echoed through both Blake and Weiss' minds as it continued to struggle.

Weiss looked at Blake, face strained with effort as she kept her rapier firmly planted into the witch's body. It seemed to be forcibly sliding the swords out of its wounds somehow. "What do we do!? It's not dying!"

"Yes it is! Stab harder!"

Blake held her sword with both hands and dragged it along the length of the witch's body. There was another loud scream from the witch as it thrashed with even greater vigor. More blood sprayed from out of it. Noticing the witch's reaction, Weiss also began twisting her rapier wildly around the stab wound, leaving similarly brutal cuts.

The witch convulsed for a several seconds longer before it let out the loudest, most desperate, scream yet and went limp. With a distant rumbling, the labyrinth began collapsing.

The two stood and walked away from each other as the blood soaking their clothes evaporated along with the witch corpse before them. The forest of chalk rippled, warped, and faded away, once again returning them to reality.

A moment of silence passed wherein Blake and Weiss merely stared at each other and the grief seed on the ground between them.

Weiss raised her rapier. "It's done."

Blake felt herself smile under her mask. "Yes, the truce is off. Do you plan on fighting me for the grief seed?"

Weiss smiled as well. "What do you think?" she asked dryly.

Blake dropped down and swept her legs in front of her, kicking the grief seed away. As she did so, she sent out another wave darkness to fill the entire warehouse… which quickly receded to a mere twenty feet as soon as she called it forth. A glyph had suddenly appeared directly under her and pulled her to the ground with crushing force. Her concentration faltered and the magic darkness dissolved completely.

She looked up and was faced with the tip of Weiss' rapier. "Tell me, Blake, how does it feel to be pinned down at sword point?"

Blake allowed herself a moment to take a deep breath before answering.

"I'm a bit surprised," she admitted. "I won't lie, you've gotten better."

Figures of darkness crawled out of the shadows and clung to Weiss from behind.

"But better is not nearly good enough."

With a yelp, Weiss attempted to shake the dark figures off. "What are these things!? I thought your powers were illusions!" The shadows wrestled the rapier from out of her hands.

"Illusions, yes." With some effort, Blake pushed herself back to her feet, counteracting Weiss' glyph through sheer will power. "But what difference does it make when your target believes it's reality?"

Understanding dawned in Weiss eyes and Blake smiled sharply.

"Do you get it, Schnee?"

Weiss glared at her even as the shadowy figure produced blades and pressed them against Weiss' neck. "Yes. I get it… It's not just illusionary darkness, is it? You must have several more tricks you've yet to use on me."

Blake nodded. "And as long as you know your place, you'll never see them. I don't want to kill you, Weiss Schnee."

"Yeah. I noticed," Weiss said dryly, dismissing the glyph under Blake's feet. "I can tell you've been holding back. Last time, you stabbed my arm to keep me from fighting."

"It was a necessary show of force."

The side of Weiss' lips twitched. "Yeah?. So is this."

The glyph on the floor disappeared, a different one replacing it—a much larger one that glowed an ominous red. Blake went wide eyed and jumped away on instinct right before a searing heat turned her world white.

The next thing Blake knew, she was lying under a heap of rubble with half-healed burns across her skin. The warehouse was in shambles around her, aisles and aisles of merchandise knocked over and set ablaze. There was not a trace of magic left. Weiss and the grief seed were long gone. All that was left was Blake and the aftermath of that red glyph that exploded.

It occured to Blake that perhaps Weiss Schnee was _not_ a telekinetic. Last Blake checked, telekinetics couldn't summon fiery explosions. But if Weiss was not telekinetic then what was her power? What magic allowed her to use abilities so similar to telekinesis and _also_ create shockwaves of heat?

Blake shelved the topic for later. Post-battle analysis could come after she was safe in her own territory. She was lucky to be alive in the first place. No use endangering herself further by staying.

With a groan, she slipped out of the rubble and looked for an exit. She could hear the fire department's sirens in the distance. She needed to leave the scene as quickly as possible.

The windows were still a good option despite the smoke rising to the ceiling. She was a magical girl so she could just ignore the lack of breathable air.

Taking a step back, she broke into a run and bounded out of the warehouse.

* * *

…

* * *

Another four days had passed since Blake's defeat against Weiss. In that time, Blake had reevaluated how she would go about dealing with Weiss should they ever cross paths again.

Between allowing Weiss make the first move, revealing her shadow clones, and getting knocked out by an explosion, Blake had performed so pathetically that it felt insulting to herself just thinking about it. The moment the witch died, she should have immediately incapacitated Weiss. Had she been less careless, that would have been exactly what she did.

If anything good came from that defeat, it was that Blake was no longer working under false assumptions. That Weiss' magic was extremely well-telegraphed telekinesis; that the skill gap between herself and Weiss was large enough to trivialize the fight; that Weiss would be at all intimidated by her shadow clones—these were assumptions that proved undeniably false. They were the reason Blake lost. She could no longer underestimate the fencer lest she be defeated again. Or worse.

Blake's eyes refocused as she landed atop a streetlight, suddenly realizing that her mind had wandered while out on patrol. Internally, she scolded herself and tried to regain her bearings.

She was on the "fringes" of Ruby's territory and her own. Specifically, she was in the middle of an awkward city block that didn't neatly fit into a grid pattern like the rest of Ruby and Blake's territory. The collection of buildings had always been a bit of an uncomfortable place for Blake and whoever happened to own the territory next door. Negotiations over ownership was almost always annoyingly long. She was thankful that Ruby—and before her, Yang—was quick to compromise.

The current agreement was that it was shared neutral territory between the two of them. Both Blake and Ruby could freely hunt the shared territory as long as they stayed out of each other's way.

That agreement came with its own problems, though.

Blake growled in annoyance as she watched a magical girl talking animatedly into her phone, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. She then noticed the dark masked figure of Blake staring at her and quickly moved far far away.

Blake grunted and bounded to a nearby rooftop.

Ruby's territory was open for any magical girl to hunt in. This meant that they were also open to hunt in part of Blake's territory since she shared ownership of that part of the city with Ruby. It did not sit well with Blake at all.

It also made Blake wonder why they were hunting there in the first place. Ruby's territory wasn't terribly large—barely large enough for Ruby herself. With how powerful Ruby was, she was probably hunting it clean every night. It couldn't possibly sustain as many girls freely coming and going as it currently was. It just didn't make sense.

Blake walked to the edge of her current rooftop and jumped to the building across the street.

At the same time, though, more magical girls circulating through an area meant more magical residue would build up over time. Many of the weaker witches would hide in the presence of a stronger witch since their faint magic signature would be masked by the other. By saturating a territory with magic, weaker witches and the familiars of fallen witches were more likely to settle down and hide in the noise where they'd be more difficult to find.

To this, Blake frowned.

The puzzling dilemma of Ruby's territory reeked of incubator involvement. It was likely that this whole debacle was another experiment to increase grief seed harvesting efficiency. Last time they tried one in Vale was years ago, when Blake was still newly contracted. It was how the current system was established, in fact. If they were truly experimenting with a new harvesting scheme, Blake may very well have to give up her territory and the safety it provided. It was an unpleasant thought to entertain.

Blake quickly shelved that thought when she felt a sudden pulse of magic. It was distinct, familiar, and so incredibly concentrated that it made her skin crawl. She looked up and saw waves of malevolent energy rolling across the sky. In her mind, she could hear a distant unholy chorus, screaming to the world.

A magical girl had fallen to despair and turned into a witch.

It was close by—just a little ways into Ruby's territory. It was also powerful. No doubt every magical girl on Blake's side of Vale had felt that pulse.

She grit her teeth.

Normally, she would wait a day or two before killing witches spawned from a magical girl succumbing to grief. They were markedly more aggressive and powerful during the initial hours following their birth—at least compared to witches birthed from saturated grief seeds. Blake would rather the witch expend that extra power during its tantrums and fight it when it was weakened and needed to feed.

She couldn't do that now, though. There had to be at least half-a-dozen girls already booking it for the witch. One magical girl on her own might not be able to take it out but multiple girls together could easily do so. And once the witch was dead, they'd inevitably start fighting over the spoils. Blake did _not_ want to get caught in that. She needed to kill the witch herself before all of them got there.

She let out a deep breath. "Ruby probably won't mind."

With a magic augmented leap, she made for the witch's location.

* * *

…

* * *

When Blake found the labyrinth, someone had already started fighting it. The entrance was flashing and distorting, with the distant sounds of explosions and clashing metal emanating from within. Blake had no qualms about stealing kills within what was effectively neutral territory so she did not hesitate. She took a step into the witch labyrinth and allowed her surroundings change before her eyes.

What was once an alley filled with trash was now a great hallway filled with angular stone pillars. Said pillars were colored a deep, light-absorbing red, with golden glowing runes etched into them. The glow seemed to periodically pulsate in its intensity, like a slow heartbeat. The walls and floor were black marble, polished so clean that Blake could see her own reflection—a reflection that waved at her even though she wasn't moving. It didn't attack but it was disconcerting. Up above was an intricate network of walkways and stairs made of marble and glass, some of them looked precariously thin and steep. The ceiling rose far into the distance with ornately designed chandeliers hanging from it. The candlelight barely reached the floor.

 _Hot_ , Blake noted as she ran in the direction her soul gem was pointing her towards. In fact, subtle as it may have been, it actually seemed to be getting slightly hotter as she ventured deeper into the labyrinth—hotter and drier.

Blake scowled at this. Hot and dry environments were indicators that the witch used fire-based attacks. The labyrinth being decorated in reds, yellows, and blacks also heavily suggested so. It was likely she'd be facing a fire witch.

 _Wonderful_ , she thought dryly.

She did not enjoy fighting witches with elemental magic. The more powerful ones were capable of countering her illusions by way of simply peppering the battlefield with whatever flavor of elemental-death they could cook up. Not being able to see their target meant nothing. She'd need to be careful.

Blake went wide eyed as a her boot fell atop a red snowflake glyph that appeared before her. It glowed menacingly.

 _Schnee…!?_

She immediately summoned a shadow clone to body-block the resulting explosion. The shockwave was still enough to send her tumbling about like a ragdoll. She rolled helplessly for several feet but managed to correct herself and stagger into a run. She felt the intense heat searing her skin.

Blake knew Weiss Schnee couldn't have been the same girl who was fighting the witch—the witch's chamber was still much deeper into the labyrinth. That meant her objective was already impossible to accomplish. Even in the unlikely event that the witch was still alive by the time she defeated Weiss, Blake would have expended too much magic trying to take Weiss down. The logical action would be to just cut her losses and run before any other magical girls arrived.

Assuming Weiss let her go.

Another explosive glyph appeared under her feet. Again, Blake summoned a shadow clone to shield herself. She recovered faster than before, though the force of the blast still left her movements ragged.

Blake was not hopeful for her escape.

A third and forth explosion came in quick succession that Blake dealt with in the same manner as the last.

Blake had quickly realized that she was at a massive disadvantage. Not only did she have no idea where her enemy was attacking her from, she was also expending too much magic trying to mitigate and repair the damage from the explosions. Blake couldn't dodge forever and it was only a matter of time before Weiss realized that she could just blanket the ground indiscriminately with red glyphs.

Blake needed to find where Weiss was and fight her in close quarters. Once she knew where to look, getting to Weiss would be easy. The problem was the labyrinth's magic saturation causing too much interference—she couldn't detect Weiss' signature. Blake needed to make use of a slightly unorthodox method of finding her.

Once again, Blake dodged out of an explosion, her ears still ringing and her burned skin still stinging. She snarled, suppressing her pain.

Blake then sent out a mental probe in all directions, brushing against a mind that recoiled on contact. She bared her teeth in a sharp smile under her mask at this. In the split second before she cut the connection, she felt Weiss' jolt of panic through their mental link. She had found her target and her target was scared—as she should be.

Weiss called several glyphs around Blake, perhaps as a desperation move. It wouldn't be enough though. Blake shrugged off the blasts and bounded for Weiss' location, casting her illusions as she did so.

A sphere of darkness materialized where Weiss was standing, atop a walkway Blake had ran under just a minute prior. Blake had made the sphere large enough that the only way she'd get out was to give up the high ground and drop to a lower walkway that Blake had easier access to.

A glyph exploded several feet behind Blake as she bounded up the network of walkways to her target. Weiss was disoriented, as Blake expected.

In an obvious act of desperation, Weiss began casting glyphs randomly in hopes of catching Blake in the chaos. To her credit, the tactic had merit—a few of them came dangerously close to hitting their mark.

It was futile, though. The sphere of darkness Blake had shrouded around Weiss was already within eyeshot. It took but a moment to climb to the walkway Weiss was standing on and dive into the shadows. Blake's hand was already raised for a magic augmented palm-slam to the forehead. One hit on the tiara on Weiss' head and her soul gem would shatter.

"Hey!"

There was a cold rush of petals and Blake suddenly found herself back in Vale, dropped hard onto the roof of a building overlooking the labyrinth entrance. Weiss was lying on roof of a building on other side of the alley, looking to have been similarly dropped. How did—?

"You two need to chill the hell out!"

Blake winced and rolled to a crouching stance. "Ruby Rose," she growled.

Standing atop the water tower on Weiss' rooftop was Ruby Rose, her white and red cloak billowing wispily in the wind. In her hands was the eerie glowing sickle that was her weapon. Blake felt a chill run down her spine just looking at it.

"My territory, my rules. No one's allowed to kill each other here." Ruby gave Blake a hard stare. "You should know this already, Blake. We're supposed to respect each other's rules."

"I was defending myself," Blake said flatly. "If I'm left with no other choice but to kill or be killed, I'm going to kill."

" _Still_ , Blake. You—"

Ruby was cut off by a sudden flash. Weiss had stood back up and summoned a glyph under her feet, bathing the rooftops with harsh white light.

" _I_ gave _you_ no choice?" Weiss laughed bitterly. "Who do you think you're fooling!? Every time we've crossed paths, you've tried to kill me!"

Blake tensed, hand on her wakizashi, ready to jump into action the instant Weiss attacked. She spoke slowly and warily so as to not provoke. "And yet you're still not dead yet. I don't _want_ to kill you, Schnee. I _never_ wanted to kill you."

" _LIES!_ " Weiss spat, stomping forward and raising her sword. "Lies, Belladonna! If I _ever_ let my guard down, you _will_ kill me! DO _NOT_ LIE TO ME! DO NOT LIE TO _HER_!"

"Uhh…" Ruby shifted her weight nervously. "I'm not sure how to tell you this but, based on experience, what Blake said is kinda true…"

Weiss face contorted with righteous fury. "If everyone chooses to go against me, then so be it!" Her sword began radiating a brilliant light, an incredible amount of magic being channeled through it—enough to cause the air to thrum and crackle with power.

An attack was coming. Blake did not know if Weiss even _had_ a technique that could use that much energy but she knew that any technique of such magnitude could kill all three of them—Weiss from expending too much magic; Blake and Ruby from getting caught in it. Blake needed to stop her somehow—

" _Sleep_ ," Ruby cut in, teleporting behind Weiss and phasing a hand _through_ Weiss' head. The white fencer went limp and fell into Ruby's arms. Seconds later, another white flash transformed Weiss out of her magical attire.

Ruby slowly laid Weiss back down onto the roof, touching a grief seed onto Weiss' soul gem.

"You're _helping_ her?" Blake growled, tilting her head slowly. "After that little tantrum of hers? She could've _killed us_."

Ruby then checked Weiss' pulse and breathing. She did not look up as she replied. "She's _scared_ , Blake. _Of course_ I'm helping her."

Blake regarded those words for a moment before, standing up, relaxing slightly. "With the way she acts, she's going to die soon—and it might not even be me who kills her. You do realize that, right?"

"Yeah… I know… That doesn't mean I won't help…"

Ruby looked up, staring meaningfully at Blake. "You need to stop fighting her."

Blake turned away, releasing her grip on her sword and letting it fall back into its sheath. "I'll keep away from her if she does the same to me. The only reason we've fought so far is because she was in my way."

"She can avoid your territory like the plague but who's to say you won't still meet again? There are some nights you hunt in neutral territory. What happens if you meet then?" Ruby stood and tossed Blake the grief seed which Blake caught. "The next time you fight and I'm not there to break it up, one of you won't survive. Are the issues between the two of you really worth dying over?"

Blake pursed her lips as she looked at the grief seed in her hands, writhing with dark energy but still far from fully-saturated. "We give up our souls to live and die for our wishes. Those who die will fuel the wishes of those who live. Such a death is our kind's fate—mine, yours, Schnee's… All magical girls'… There's no going against it… but by no means will I allow myself to die while my gem still shines." She tossed the grief seed back. "This is _your_ kill. Keep it."

Ruby pocketed the grief seed and sighed. "You always make it seem like we're not allowed to help each other…"

Blake averted her eyes.

"I like you, Blake," Ruby said flatly. "I don't want you to die." She scooped up the unconscious fencer in her arms. "I don't want this Schnee girl to die either… Every death of ours that I witness is a memory that's burned into my soul… I don't want to have to remember… but I will… because no one else would remember us otherwise."

Blake scowled. "You don't have to do that, you know? You don't need to carry that burden."

"I want to, though. They deserve it—especially the ones I had to kill myself." Ruby chuckled and turned her back to Blake. Blake couldn't help but notice the pained roughness in Ruby's laugh. "And besides… I don't really have a choice. It's something I wished for, after all…"

With those final foreboding words, Ruby and Weiss blinked out of sight in a rush of rose petals, leaving Blake to stare quietly at the spot where the reaper once stood.

* * *

…

* * *

In the month since Blake and Weiss' last battle, they had encountered each other five times. Blake would see Weiss stalking along the street that served as the border between Blake's and Ruby's territory. Blake never attacked but always made sure Weiss could sense her watching. She'd usually be crouching atop a lamp post or other high structure, masked face staring menacingly down at the fencer. Weiss would always stop and stare back with wary eyes. Neither made any attempt to instigate another fight. After a silent exchange of glares, Weiss would resume walking, no doubt following the magic trail of a nearby witch. Blake would then resume her own hunt.

It was concerning, the fact that Weiss was still alive but did not control her own territory. The way the incubators had set up Vale simply did not allow such a thing to occur. The combination of scarce spawn rates for witches and the competitive culture the incubators had fostered made it nigh impossible for newcomers like Weiss to maintain a place on the city's food chain without replacing someone else. None of the other girls in the neighboring territories seemed to have any news of recent deaths among the veterans. At the same time, the density and frequency of witch spawns did not seem higher than normal. That meant that either those rats really _were_ experimenting with a new grief harvesting scheme or Weiss was overdue for departure. Neither option appealed to Blake.

She shook her head free of those thoughts. It would be just an hour before she began her nightly patrols through her territory and her mind was already wandering. She took pride in the fact that she could maintain a job even though she was a magical girl. She needed to focus, else lose that point of pride.

"Blake, you can head out early if you want. I can tell you're distracted."

From the bookstore counter, Blake winced as her boss addressed her. She had hoped he wouldn't notice—he always did but she still hoped all the same. "I can finish my shift," she said quickly.

Tukson chuckled. "You don't need to act like that. We're probably not gonna get any more customers tonight anyway. It's Friday and I can tell you have plans. A young woman like you should enjoy her weekend. Let an old timer like me deal with locking up. Don't worry about today's pay."

Blake pursed her lips. _Enjoying_ her weekend might not be possible considering she was a magical girl, but he was right in that she had plans. She had felt a witch's labyrinth appear near the edge of her territory just as her lunch break had ended earlier. She had been itching to kill it for hours. An early dismissal was just the opportunity she was waiting for.

"Thank you, Tukson."

Minutes later, she exited the store with her bag in tow. Already, she could feel the witch from the alley, two blocks away, beckoning her into its labyrinth. She jumped up to a nearby fire-escape to hide her bag and then bounded for the labyrinth entrance.

Thus began that night's hunt.

* * *

…

* * *

It was a few minutes past midnight when Blake encountered Ruby for the first time since she broke up the fight between Blake and Weiss. Had their encounter now had been any other circumstance, Blake would have actually been pleased to see the reaper. Alas, Ruby was standing alone in an alley, deep within Blake's territory. A grief seed lay at her feet from the witch she had apparently just defeated.

Blake dropped to the ground in front of Ruby. Her wakizashi gleamed, reflecting what little moonlight filtered down from the gap between the buildings. She was ready to strike at a moment's notice.

"Start talking, Ruby," Blake growled. "Neither of us wants this to end in a fight. Why are you here?"

Ruby smiled nervously, taking a step back as she raised her scythe defensively. "You know, it doesn't _have_ to turn into a fight," she suggested helpfully.

Blake bared her teeth under her mask. " _Talk._ "

Ruby flinched at this and very quickly began explaining. "You know how witch labyrinths sometimes change location while you're inside of them? It's basically that."

Blake tilted her head in response. "You're two miles away from your territory."

"So were you when we first met." Ruby countered. "You can keep the grief seed if you want—I've got extra." Her stance lowered, cloak billowing violently against wind that did not blow. "But if you really want to fight me, I can't promise that I won't kill you. My scythe is unwieldy and you're way too good for me to hold back."

Blake shook with barely contained outrage. "Dammit, Ruby, we had a _deal!_ These sorts of agreements are why all the veterans in this city haven't killed each other yet. Do you have _any_ idea what will end up happening if I _don't_ try to kill you now?"

"I do but… I don't really wanna think about that. Can't we burn that bridge when we get to it?"

Blake took a step forward. "I'm sorry, Ruby, but I can't let this go."

Ruby pursed her lips. "Well… I guess I'm sorry too…"

There was an explosion of magic that consumed the entire alley before immediately dissolving into a cloud of particles. Both Blake and Ruby had attempted to cast their illusion magic and it had cancelled each other out. Even as this happened, Blake and Ruby moved in for an attack with their weapons, sparks flying as blades clashed, sending ripples through the specks of light floating in the air. They both recoiled from the impact.

In a moment of clarity, as her sword rang in her hands, Blake noticed a number of things wrong. Ruby's mannerisms were slightly different. The way she carried herself did not have the same weight. The chilling aura that surrounded Ruby whenever she had her cloak up and her weapon out was barely noticeable. But most of all, Ruby had started the fight with an attempted killing blow.

During this realization, Blake righted herself and rushed forward with a magic-augmented hand toward the rose-shaped gem pinning Ruby's cloak to her shoulders. She was able to reach the reaper without much effort. The moment her fingers were around the jeweled rose, she clenched her fist, breaking the gem.

Ruby limply slumped forward into Blake. Had she actually been a magical girl, she would have de-transformed after a few seconds. Instead, Ruby giggled ominously. "Smart girl," she whispered into Blake's ear. "But that's not enough."

A fist shot up and hit Blake square in the jaw, sending her reeling. As she stumbled back, Ruby began swinging her scythe wide and wild, completely disregarding the hindrance posed by the walls on either side of them. This allowed Blake time to regain her balance well enough to dodge most of the swings. She got out with damage mostly to her clothing—damage that would repair itself as soon enough anyway.

There _was_ one particularly deep gash on her shoulder, however. It had severed the muscles that moved her arm. She could still wield her wakizashi just fine but the use of her other limb would be limited to flailing until she spent the time and magic to heal herself.

The inside of Blake's mask felt hazy as she numbed the pain she felt in her shoulder. She glared at Ruby, ignoring the haziness. _No. Not Ruby,_ she then corrected grimly. She once again raised her sword, ready for another strike. _What's in front of me is a witch or familiar. Somehow it got the drop on me._ Think _, Blake. How did you get in this situation?_

The faux-Ruby once again attacked, though none of the swings connected this time. Blake kept close to her opponent, well past the ideal striking range for the scythe faux-Ruby was using. This allowed Blake to deliver several cuts that should have been crippling or downright lethal had her opponent been actually human.

Eventually, faux-Ruby was so cut-up that she couldn't move anymore. Shortly after, her mutilated form turned gray and shrivelled up into a dried-up husk. Blake nudged the husk with her boot and it disintegrated, turning into so much a pile of dust. So too did the alleyway around her.

* * *

…

* * *

Blake jolted upright, eyes darting around as she took in as much of the scene before her as possible.

She was untransformed, spread out on a lumpy bed. Atop the bedside table was her soul gem, darkened significantly but still glowing well enough. The room she was in was dimly lit and had no doors or windows. A patchwork of black and grey pattern wallpaper was pasted haphazardly onto the walls. Piles of dust sat still and unmoving on the tiled floor around her bed.

She didn't need to be told where she was.

 _It must be a dream eater_ , Blake thought numbly as she wobbled out of the bed.

The last thing she remembered was stepping into the labyrinth. Next thing she knew, she was fighting Ruby in an alley. The witch must have had her under from the moment she entered. Careless of her, really.

She shook her head. She had time to lament her mistakes later. With a surge of magic, she transformed, sweeping away the haze from her mind.

 _Not very far,_ Blake thought after sending out a pulse from her gem. She detected another magic signature with the witch—probably another magical girl.

 _Someone's fighting in my territory,_ Blake thought grimly, putting a hand on one of the walls.

She unsheathed her wakizashi and, with a smooth swing of her arm, slid the edge against the wall. The sword tore through inches of concrete as if it were made of the same thin paper decorating it. She swung again to cut a large patch of wall into a gap she could walk through.

She then pursed her lips. _What is she even_ doing _?_

The other magical girl was losing.

Blake broke into a run down the halls of what seemed to be a run-down apartment complex.

The other girl had the audacity to hunt in Blake's territory yet let herself fall prey to the very witch she was supposed to hunt? Dream eaters were pitifully weak—weaker than even illusion witches since they required their targets to be asleep just to be able to create their illusions. Anyone with a strong enough mind should be able to resist dream eaters—or at least break free from their illusions in a timely manner. Just how _bad_ could this magical girl be?

Blake flew across the tiled floor in a strange, murderous trance, every step shooting her several feet forward. Whenever one of the witch's familiars, an amorphous, vaguely humanoid construct of sand got in her way, she cut it down without even missing a beat.

What exactly had this other girl's plan been? Did she expect to arrive while Blake was fighting the witch and simply steal the kill? Perhaps she planned to kill Blake and _then_ kill the witch? Or maybe she wanted to kill Blake _after_ killing the witch had tired Blake out? No. Those might have worked if it were any other type of witch but there was little chance with this current one. Once the witch was dead, Blake would have just killed the other girl for her trouble. It had to be some other reason.

As Blake was running down the flight of stairs that led to the witch's chamber, the labyrinth began collapsing around her. What was once a claustrophobic, dilapidated hallway disintegrated into sand and was blown away.

Again, Blake found herself in the alley where the labyrinth entrance once was. Before her was a girl in white, sobbing into her hands, a grief seed planted on the ground in front of her.

Weiss Schnee.

Blake frowned. _Of course_ it was Weiss Schnee. Things couldn't have been easy.

Far toward Weiss' side looked to be a bag of groceries haphazardly—or perhaps hurriedly—dropped. From the looks of things, the fencer was on an errand when she noticed the labyrinth entrance and quickly dropped what she was doing in order to fight the witch.

Blake sheathed her Wakizashi, noting how dark the inset jewel on Weiss' tiara had gotten. Based on how she was still crying uncontrollably, the witch must have forced sleep on her somehow. Whatever the girl saw during her dream must not have been pleasant. At the same time, she might have also been near the edge of despair before she even entered the labyrinth.

Blake's scowl deepened. Things _really_ couldn't have been easy.

"You have a choice, Schnee," she said, turning away from Weiss. "Grab the seed and run or stay here and I kill you. You have ten seconds."

Blake didn't want to kill Weiss—really, she didn't want to kill anyone—but if she was to survive, she _needed_ to maintain control of her territory. Reputation was one of the only things keeping the magical girls of Vale from constantly fighting each other for grief seeds. She needed to be ruthless. She needed to instill fear and caution among her peers. If she couldn't do that…

Blake grit her teeth and snarled. The whole situation was so frustrating. She had agreed not to fight Weiss but here she was in Blake's territory. Blake couldn't _not_ defend her territory. At the same time, Weiss' gem was so dark. Fighting Weiss now wouldn't be an actual fight as so much a mercy kill. If Blake actually wanted Weiss dead, she wouldn't have even hesitated. But a grief seed was _right there_ , though. If Weiss just took it… If she just used it…

A sense of danger overcame Blake's internal struggle, compelling her to duck under a lunging stab from Weiss' rapier.

 _Sloppy,_ Blake thought as Weiss stumbled over Blake's crouched form. The grief was dulling Weiss' senses.

As Weiss struggled to stand, Blake stood and picked up the grief seed still planted into the pavement. She presented the seed to the fencer. "Your soul gem is almost completely black, Schnee. You _need_ to take this grief seed."

Weiss lunged once more with her sword which Blake easily sidestepped.

Blake pursed her lips. "Either take this grief seed or let me kill you. I refuse to allow you to turn into a witch."

The next attempt at stabbing Blake was met with a grapple and throw, leaving Weiss pinned to the ground on her stomach, her arm twisted behind her back.

"This is for your own good," Blake said flatly, touching the grief seed against Weiss' soul gem.

Tears resumed streaming down Weiss' cheeks. "Just kill me!" she screamed.

Blake did not reply, simply allowing the grief seed to purge Weiss' soul gem of corruption.

Weiss began thrashing underneath Blake. "I just wanted control of my own life! Why won't you give it to me!? Why won't you just let me die!?"

Blake twisted the arm a bit more and the thrashing became less violent. "What happened? Why do you constantly fling yourself into situations that lead to your death?"

"What does it matter!? Why do you care!? Why does anyone care!? This whole world is against me! Just kill me already!"

"Why do you want to die so badly?"

Only a feral scream escaped Weiss' lips as a white glyph appeared under them. Blake immediately fell atop Weiss, feeling a crushing weight on her back. The grief seed dropped to the ground as she struggled to sit back up.

"Stop… using… magic," Blake groaned. "You're gonna turn into a witch…"

Weiss did not reply and instead increased the power of the white glyph pulling them down.

A sense of desperation fell upon Blake as she realized that, if she did not do something, Weiss would turn into a witch while she was on top of her. With unbelievable effort, Blake stretched her hand toward Weiss' tiara and squeezed.

For the second time that night, she felt a soul gem crack between her fingers.

* * *

…

* * *

"I guess I should have expected this."

Blake looked up at a white cloak billowing on the rooftop across the street from the one Blake had laid Weiss' body down. She allowed her gaze to linger on Ruby for a moment before looking back down to Weiss.

"What even happened that pushed her that far into despair?" Blake asked, taking a step away from the corpse as Ruby teleported to her side. "She was too far gone. Not even a grief seed was helping her," she added, looking away.

"It's hard to say," Ruby said, kneeling down and brushing a tuft of hair from Weiss' forehead. Her lips quivered. "She was never really open with me. I could tell she had baggage but she never wanted to talk about it."

Blake crossed her arms and shifted her weight. "I didn't want this, Ruby."

Ruby chuckled dryly. "Yeah… I know…"

Blake released a nervous breath as a the air condensed around them into a wispy recreation of Weiss' last struggle before Blake killed her. A chill ran up her spine when the illusions passed through her body and lost coherence. The last action she saw before the illusion dissolved was her apparition pinning Weiss to the ground.

"The strongest memory people have of someone who just died is usually their last one," Ruby whispered, as clear to Blake's ears as the words of death itself. "That one was still fresh in your mind."

Ruby stood and gave Blake a look of concern. "You gonna be okay?"

Blake looked down, shifting her weight once more. She was unsure what the expression on her face was but she was grateful that her mask kept it hidden.

"I'll manage," she eventually answered. "She wasn't the first person I killed. She won't be the last."

Ruby shook her head slowly. "Don't you get tired of it? Of all the killing?"

Blake raised her head to give Ruby a brief look before she turned her back to the reaper. "I've been tired of it for a long time. It could be worse, though. At the very least, this is better than what it was like when I first contracted…"

There was a long silence where Ruby did not reply. During that time, there was only the sound of shuffling fabric and boots hitting concrete. Ruby began walking away.

"I'm taking this body off your hands—maybe find a way to bury her…"

Blake put a hand on her mask, letting her fingers slide down the ivory veins. "A burial for a magical girl?" she asked, her throat feeling dry. "That's a lovely sentiment…"

Ruby hummed in bittersweet amusement. "It'd be nice, wouldn't it? If I make ends meet, you're welcome to come to her funeral."

There was the sound of rustling petals. Without even turning, Blake immediately knew that she was alone on the roof.

Blake gingerly touched the soul gem on her neck. "Yeah," she replied with a sad, cynical smile. "That would be nice…"

* * *

…

* * *

Blake Belladonna sat quietly behind the cashier desk of a small bookstore in downtown Vale. She was reading an old myth about a woman who murdered her family in order to go travelling the world with a dashing hero but was betrayed by him and left to die on a lonely island. She had given up everything to get what she wanted. She did not receive it. All she received was loss. Loss of dignity. Loss of control. Even the loss of a home to come back to. It was an utter tragedy.

A frown was on Blake's lips as she turned the page. She traced a line across the paper with her fingers, following the wallowing prose of the woman's sorrow. She felt her skin prickle.

"Ruby Rose," Blake growled, looking up at the girl standing in front of the cashier desk.

Ruby gave a small smile and wave before depositing three large text books onto the counter.

As Blake began scanning and bagging the books, Ruby pulled out a handful of bills and started counting them.

"How're you holding up?" Ruby eventually asked, presenting the money to Blake. Her face was carefully neutral.

"Well enough," Blake replied, working cash register and producing change for Ruby. She pursed her lips. "I don't need you to look out for me. I've survived long enough on my own."

Ruby pocketed the change and scooped up the bagged books. "Your ghosts will always haunt you, Blake," she said as she started walking away. "It's about time you stop being afraid of them."

With that, Ruby left the bookstore, leaving Blake to look on in silence. She felt Ruby's presence leave her territory soon after.

Blake's day shift continued without further incident.

* * *

 **End of Chapter**


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